If I ever change the world I will do it through memory,
recalling that once I could set points and change the dwell
on a distributor; could change a manual typewriter ribbon;
could go all day without a phone call — indeed, I could miss phone calls
and never know they had happened unless someone
called back to say they had called earlier and that they were glad
to catch me at home;
recalling that friends who moved away were lost to me
unless I called at great expense or took great pains to write them
regularly, keeping their letters close at hand
to ensure that I never lost an address or a zip code; recalling that
I knew how to look up their numbers in a phone book and could send them
clippings of items from the local paper to keep them up to date
on what they were missing;
recalling that every kid in my neighborhood could fire a rifle,
spent Saturday nights shooting rats at the town dump, never thinking twice
about the danger of guns because we trusted our guns the way
we trusted each other;
recalling that stores were closed on Sunday, that we waited till Monday
if we needed something, that if we needed something on Sunday
it was not important unless we were dying for lack of it, and that need
rarely was anything more than want amplified.
This is not nostalgia. Nostalgia is for those
who believe nothing is retrievable from what we remember.
I can believe that everything once possible — the things I recall
of how we made it through before — is still possible.
I can recall the sound of a simple car falling into a purr
under my own hands,
ready to drive because I made it so. I can recall
being ready to go, being unconcerned about who might miss me.
I can recall how it was to be in control of so much, of so many simple things.
If I am to change the world,
it will be because
I can recall how it was
to live
with my hands always dirty,
and proud of the same.
Dark Matter 