Lieu de Living Mémoire
They have no close living
relatives, but because of their
ability to form aerial roots
and sprouts, ginkgo trees growing
one to two kilometers from
the spot where the atomic bomb
was dropped were among the few
living things to survive. Even now,
in autumn their fan-shaped leaves—
thousands of monks in their saffron
shifts—hold on
and wave. It’s ok
to wave back, like elephants that return
repeatedly to the skeleton
of a matriarch to fondle
her tusks and bones. Once,
when a researcher played the recording
of a deceased elephant’s voice,
the creatures went wild
searching for their lost relative, and the dead
elephant’s daughter called for days.
In the basement I shuffle
the heavy stack of x-rays
of my mother’s back, vertebrae ascending
the way the chunks of ancient
Roman columns rise, her ribs espaliered
like the branches in Taddeo Gaddi’s
Tree of Life. I deal the thick celluloid sheets
around the room, sometimes hold them
up to the window for light,
but the ribs become transparent, the dark
between them all that’s left
of sight. When we were
children, we would hold and hoist
each other up—first on knees,
then shoulders—believing if only
we could reach that bottom rung
on the telephone pole, we could keep
climbing higher and higher, the way
that ginkgo limbs, after millions of years, go on
inserting dashes into what they think
is an unending sentence.
Angie Estes’ seventh book of poems, Last Day on Earth in the Eternal City, was published in 2025 by Unbound Edition Press, and her selected poems, The Swallows Come Out, is forthcoming in 2026. Read more.
Angie Estes, “Lieu de Living Mémoire” from Parole (Oberlin College Press, 2018). Reprinted with permission from Oberlin College Press.