Fiddlehead : An Exchange

Memory: Part 4

The Memory Exchange Continues

Last April, when Brian Funke and I first brainstormed the idea for this written exchange, we thought we knew exactly what it would be about: Memory. For this theme, we thought about the way the Mind might be compared to a Poet who is always recording its enfleshed experience—its human-ness.

Collaboration is an experiment. And like all the best experiments, there is usually an unknown, an X-factor, that one cannot predict in the beginning. Something ineffable and emergent appears when two creative minds try to wind their individual thought strands together. Two minds create A Third Thing—or perhaps we’ll call it a Morphling like the one that Brian created back in Part One? In any case, the Morphling has now taken over. It’s driving our Memory Exchange tour bus, and we are passengers on a joyful journey.

While our exchange is still exploring the theme of Memory, I find myself also thinking about Time. In this piece, I play with the concepts of sleep, dreaming, and time as a plant form always growing into the unknown future.

Here is Part 4. Parts 5 and 6 will be published next week.

Memory: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

and while you desire

a particular end

chapter two will be

penned tomorrow,

so tonight you shelve

each volume

with hopes of an encounter

in your dreams

—Brian Funke

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a fiddlehead fern unrolls in Johnston Mill Nature Preserve

Dear One,

How are you sleeping lately? Do you lay down exhausted, but find it hard to relax and drift off? Do you wake in the middle of the night with your weary mind racing?

I’m suffering with you.

On the nights when I wake up before 4:00 AM, I will usually try and stay in bed— in total stillness—relaxing every muscle and breathing deeply. I call it pretend sleeping. At least I’m resting. Sometimes I actually drift off, which is the goal, of course.

In these suspended moments, between consciousness and sleep, my deeper mind begins to stir. It’s in the language of almost-dreaming, that the subconscious can finally emerge—unfiltered—speaking in its own native tongue of symbol and emotion. Lately, I’ve written a few poem fragments in this mind-space, and it’s becoming a practice that I enjoy.

You knock at the door of reality,

shake your thought-wings,

loosen your shoulders,

and open.

⌘

-Rumi, trans. by Coleman Barks

The dream reference at the end of Brian’s beautiful poem Bookshelf was a catalyst for the abecedarian poem you’re about to read. I invite you to move with me through a surreal dream-forest that reveals a strangely beautiful place—as authentic as waking life—just differently true.

---

FIDDLEHEAD

As day breaks, the chant begins
Below the arch of heaven's bend.

Cycles of frost and bloom and burn—
Dust and decay, I will return.

Earth, in quiet cycles, sings
From sweet cicadas thrumming brings
God near—into the light—for one more day.

Hours of silence, I walk alone
In rhythm-prayer: my breath, my bone.

Just as the holy snail
Kneels to paint silver
Letters on rain-damp stone--
Mossy scriptorium!   We sing
New hymns of beauty and pain.

Our memories are poems, smooth like stones

Pouring forth from a river, familiar and strange.

Quiet your mind and open it wider.

Roots drilling down, earth-bound, sharing
Sky—like gemels, like twins—
Trees in our slow-motion dance.

Underground, we will meet at a
Vanishing place—some night in a dream
Where the ghost flowers sleep.          

Xylem will pulse with the rhythm of life;
You ride on this world always whirling! 
Zenith of Now--let's follow the curve--

        The green tip of Time unfurling . . . 

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How about you, my friend—what do you do when sleep won’t come?

Has an idea ever spoken to you in that liminal space between reality and dreaming?

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Special thanks to one of my favorite poets, Kortney Garrison, who opened my eyes to the mesmerizing world of abecedarian poetry—a form where each line begins with a consecutive letter of the alphabet.

Here’s a link to her long, beautiful love poem written for the microseasons:

School Of The Seasons A Microseasons Abecedarian

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Here’s another one by Margaret Ann Silver a wonderful poet here on Substack who’s written an abecedarian inspired by a text message conversation with her husband. She writes with wit and disarming candor, and I absolutely adore her work.

Abecedarian for 24 hours in Idaho

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And one more by Conny Borgelioen. She’s a fantastic and published poet, whose genuine insight and tenderness always leaves me in awe.

Everything worthwhile takes time

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Perhaps you'll be inspired to write an abecedarian of your own? Or maybe just a few lines, which is how this poem began—with a tiny snail.

Start anywhere. Start small. See where it takes you.

xo Ann