THE RITUAL OF FORGETTING

When leaving one home and moving to another,
The ancestors said goodbye to stale dreams.
They etched the rock with memory and mapped the way to change.
The ancestors
Said goodbye to their village made of earth and to
Shadows blurred by their own tears. They sang
The song of Ending and danced the Dance of Leaving,
So nothing would be misunderstood
About the necessity to start again in a place of light
They believed adjacent in their own hearts.
The ritual of forgetting took so long boys
Grew into bears and girls became butterflies
While waiting for those old lines of place
To disappear. The new village was the same
As the old village, except its edges were less rounded
With sorrow, and along its walls slid the shadows
Of regret in which they saw old familiar pieces of themselves.
The ritual of forgetting was the means by which
The ancestors prepared the ground for seeds of change,
While remembering the tears required to grow them.
—-Nancy Wood