Jeanne Yu

Remembering

I said, the tree is like time, each ring of growth a round of memories.
My daughter says, or is it more like a watch, branches on the face measuring time?

I said, the tree has been watching us many years in its lengthening shadow.
she says, this tree is taller, wider, how can it be the same as the young tree? 

I said, we watched the tree watching us as it grew. Are we not the same people?
she says, I cannot say if we are more the same than the tree is of itself. Is sameness the
opposite of changed and memory the opposite of forgotten?

I said, we can choose to not be the same as a memory, by blurring it into who we become,
such that we no longer need it.  Would lost memories alter who I
am now?
she says, perhaps. What then would you call the callus where the tree branch is cut and
lost?

I said, I would call it a face of emptiness with waning eyes searching, and over time, its
curiosity becomes smaller and smaller until the wound closes and the
emptiness itself becomes obscured.  If the branch is gone what has the
tree lost? 

she says, it will have lost a way of healing.

Jeanne Yu is an emerging poet, a lifelong environmentalist, an engineer, and a mom who completed her MFA at Pacific University in January 2023. She was a semi-finalist in Rattle’s poetry contest in 2022. Jeanne’s work appears in Rattle 78, Breakwater Review, Paper Dragon and Oregon Poetry Association. She served recently as the assistant poetry editor for Northwest Review.