The Keeping

An Elegy for the Present

We photograph the sunset, every one,
as if the light might stay inside the frame,
as if by capturing we could become
the keepers of a thing without a name.

We save the stub from every concert seat,
the boarding pass, the faded parking slip,
believing if the archive stays complete
then nothing truly vanishes our grip.

We hold our children tighter than we should
and memorize the weight of sleeping forms,
the milky breath, the smell of rain on wood,
the way they run to us through summer storms.

We press the flowers from the funeral spray
and store them in a box we’ll never touch,
as if by keeping we could make them stay,
as if by loving we could love too much.

But here’s the thing we learn too late, my friend,
that breaks the heart and makes us finally see:
impermanence is not the bitter end—
it’s all there ever was or meant to be.

The photograph will yellow in its drawer.
The child grows. The concert hall goes dark.
And you, who saved and treasured every shore,
will leave no trace—not even a question mark.

Not grief that things must end should make us weep,
but this: that we were briefly, briefly here,
and thought ourselves the kind of thing that keeps,
and learned the truth, and loved it all, and disappeared.

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