Memento Mori by Susan Zimmerman

Memento Mori

No need for a skull on my desk.

All I see will survive me,
be handed on, arrive at last
in the Goodwill jumble,
handled or worn or read by strangers.
All things escape as if leaving me

when I am the one leaving.
Some things seem close in time
but far in distance. I cull my life.
Sheets of paper, so light, multiply,

grow heavy. If I try
to remember it all, I’ll go mad.
When rings melt down for gold—

Let go, let go, they sing
in their melting.

*

Susan Zimmerman’s chapbook, Nothing is Lost, was published by Caitlin Press in 1980. Her poems have more recently appeared or are forthcoming in literary journals such as Prairie Fire, Gyroscope Review, The Maynard, and SWWIM Every Day. A poem of hers is also included in the new anthology The Path to Kindness: Poems of Connection and Joy, edited by James Crews.