Hippocampus

Where do her memories go

After she has built them?

There’s a dance floor

Where they first met

Then he talked and talked

Until it was late.

There’s a café

Where they met next

Saturday and talked

About poetry and stuff

Over a cup of coffee,

Bubble black tea,

And his headache.

There’s a bar

On 2^nd Avenue and a drink

Called “The Inventor”

There’s an appetizer

Vegetarian

There’s a night

Rainy

There’s a poet shivering and daring

To hold his stranger hand.

There’s a Turkish cab driver

Who recognized a lucky couple

--One bald and one bold--

Like a Certified Copy

They laughed and rolled

Their fingers

Round innocent explorations

Of emotions different

From a documented reality.

There’s a good-bye

There’s no kiss, not yet,

But a memory

The memory!

Where do memories go?

He is a doctor and he knows his stuff

He says there’s a camp or a campus

Called “hippocampus”

Where all memories go.

Doctor!

What happens to memories

She doesn’t want them?

How would they pack and leave

Her hippocampus?