Carpet of Memory 2 (Paul Klee), Sonnet #537

“Flying carpet” might be more apt,

Fleeing, unreachable, rapt.

Not magical, but uncanny,

Not even real, epiphany

Without a point because it is

Not up to analysis.

We’re given only a number —

How many can’t be counted, known —

(Fraying threads, fabric unsewn).

“I’m certain that I remember,”

I say. The carpet flaps. I fall.

Can I recall one thing at all?

The memories that I most fear

Are those I hope to lose next year.

My book of the first 200 of these sonnets is now available for purchase. Click here: My Human Disguise. 

Carpet of Memory (Klee), Sonnet #369

No one has a first memory, not one.

We can so designate any we choose,

The dimmest, the least associative,

A parent’s kiss or a promise undone,

The smell of mother’s milk, a game we lose,

But not that first moment we know we live.

For then they propagate like dry grasses

In a desert, patches of green, some sweet,

Some blown, or desiccated cactuses —

All ungraspable, too desired, too fleet.

I choose my first — not a moment, a dream:

“Wendy” and I are threatened by an ape.

She wears a witch’s hat and I a cape.

Then all fades away in a moon’s blank beam.