Memory and poetry go together, absolutely. It is a matter of preserving and of remembering things.

. . .because we had survived
sisters and brothers, daughters and sons,
we discovered bones that rose
from the dark earth and sang
as white birds in the trees

Because the story of our life
becomes our life

Because each of us tells the same story
but tells it differently
and none of us tells it the same way twice . . (from, Why We Tell Stories)

Poetry, for me, is the answer to, 'How does one stay sane when private lives are being ransacked by public events?' It's something that hangs over your head all the time.

Late Hours"

On summer nights the world
moves within earshot
on the interstate with its swish
and growl, and occasional siren
that sends chills through us.
Sometimes, on clear, still nights,
voices float into our bedroom,
lunar and fragmented,
as if the sky had let them go
long before our birth.

In winter we close the windows
and read Chekhov,
nearly weeping for his world.

What luxury, to be so happy
that we can grieve
over imaginary lives.

Heartland
Now that we’ve given our hearts away
With the bric-a-brac, we want them back.
Now we look for them secondhand,
Someone else’s, in the old songs,
The slowly unfolding novels
We never had time for. Hearts
That taught themselves to fly;
…overstuffed hearts, still leaking
Downy secrets like feathers.

We want someone to say,
‘I give you my heart’, meaning,
‘Summer and winter’, meaning
‘All my time in the this world’…

I am imprinted with the whole sense of European history, especially German history, going back to World War I, which really destroyed all the old values and culture. My grandparents had been reasonably well-off but they became quite poor, living in an attic apartment.