The smell of pine and bacon grease,
a house in a piney tract of land, a kitchen
in the house, a stove in the kitchen,
a skillet beneath which lowly burns
a bluish flame the jets discharge when a match
is held against their sound, a sound
that travels outside in from a metered box
where a boy sits watching the radium dials
record the backward passage of time,
and time itself, the beginning
of time, and beyond the beginning
the mind in the act of calling to mind.

The Memory-Keeper