And then my mother asked

Eternity lies in those who remember us.

And then my mother asked:
	What are you going to do with your life?

And I replied:
	I’m going to write and remember you.

And she said:
	Oh, what a good son.

Any art is an art of remembrance,
	Recalling things past and dead.

It’s how we continue as a species,
	When our minds are lost to the void.

Without language, without remembrance,
	We are all as will-o-the-wisps,

Floating on the winds of eternity,
	Forgotten as we fall to the ground.

I write to remember and recall,
	To set into words those things which would be lost,

Cast into a perdition of forgetfulness,
	Consigned to the amnesia of time.

We write, and we paint, and we sing,
	To make those after us remember,

To claim our stake on eternity,
	An immortality our bodies and minds deny us.

When you ask someone: What do you do?
	And they answer: I write (or sing, or paint)

Do not smirk and scoff and ask: 
	What good is that?

Think, instead, that our time will not perish,
	That you will not be unknown to

Your children’s children.
	We will memorialize you

When your gravestones are abandoned
	And given over to weeds.