I’ve forgotten the smell of ponderosa pine on the trail up, and
The dust of hiking down. And I’ve lost Sierra snow melt, white water 
Over granite spliced by cold weather. 

I’ve forgotten the winter wind howling down streets
In Port Townsend, Great Falls, and in Victoria
Where night crashed into the cemetery, and the stone angel 
Stared through wild trees, bone-cold.

And I’ve forgotten forms of travel—the rattle of trains, the song
That lifts the plane and the song that helps it land. I’ve lost
my mother’s breakfast voice, my father’s frown,
my cousins playing in the hay barn, and my uncle at the piano.

I’ve forgotten misery on the tongue like a dry wafer. Forgotten
the loss of trees by fire—the sudden flare, the incandescent cloud—
and the road abandoned to flood.

A few names of wildflowers remain—the blue
lupine, the poppy, trillium, myosotis. I have forgotten 
the delicate and the plain, but I recall everything about my sister.