DROWNING IN MEMORY'S RIVER

Now your daughter invokes Mnemosyne,
having years ago renounced the memory
of her own mother.

She claims you've forgotten your past
and hers. Child of divorce, drowning
in the amniotic sea of adolescence,

your daughter skips your birthday
as you let slip hers. Its all past now.
Why quibble about particulars?

Forgetting the true order and origin
of things is as good as death,
your daughter quotes. She's keeper

of the family history now, while you
get set to sail down Lethe, forgetful
river of her future.


Taylor Graham is a volunteer search-and-rescue dog handler in the Sierra Nevada, who also helps her husband (a retired wildlife biologist) with his field projects. Her poems have appeared in The Iowa Review, The New York Quarterly, Poetry International, and elsewhere, and is included in the anthology California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present (Santa Clara University, 2004).