Large Things to Forget

by Richard Stoltzfoos

Once I lived a terror dream that I was all that mattered;
My world was red, in pressed the stresses, flattening as I flattered,
My world an apophatic point upon a blank white wall,
And I forgot there were such things as kindnesses—at all;
Forgot the flaming size of stars, the sharp lines of the moon,
The whales that shoulder waves, and plunge, and bugle out their tune,
Forgot the great wide mountain slope too large for all its trees,
Forgot the asian cultures and forgot their histories,
Forgot the Fibonacci sequence, primes, and Mandelbrot;
And gritty prisons; sunburnt work; and magic I forgot;
Forgot my body (strange to say)! It wasn’t in my mind;
And I forgot emotion too, and to it I was blind.
Forgot the blind and deaf and lame, forgot the many dead;
That other men exist at all I put out of my head.
These are such large things to forget
That now I thank the dwarf who broke
My mind apart to show my lack
Before I haply woke.

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Richard Stoltzfoos is the son of Adin,
son of Wilmer,
son of Elam,
son of Moses,
son of Samuel,
son of John,
son of Christian,
son of Nicholas Stoltzfus,
who in the year 1766 emigrated from Europe,
being born of Christian Gottlieb Stoltzfus,
of the Saxon line of that name
which began in the year of our Lord 400,
by the provision of God, in German Saxony.

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Photography by Kenneth Godoy