Every once in a while, I check to see what search engine terms are driving traffic to the Logistics Viewpoints website. Not surprising, terms like “logistics blog” and “supply chain trends” are high on the list. Earlier this year, I wrote about how people searching for “shippers needing carriers” were landing at our site. On any given week, if you scan down the list of search terms, they all make sense. But a couple of months ago, I was surprised by one of the terms that appeared on the list: supply chain poem.
I’ve always been good at math and science, and I have an engineering degree from Cornell, but there’s always been a barefoot poet roaming inside of me. I inherited this from my maternal grandmother, who passed away this summer at the age of 95. She had an enlarged heart, which the doctors attributed to ventricular hypertrophy, but what they didn’t know is that when your soul overflows with verses, your heart is bound to swell.
I’ve been trying to write a supply chain poem the past few weeks, with little success. When I worked at Motorola in Arizona, I had the great opportunity to take poetry and creative writing classes with Norman Dubie, Jeannine Savard, and Alberto Rios at Arizona State University. I wrote many poems and short stories back then, most of them not worth remembering, but a few were good enough to print out and save.
Last year, I received a large envelope in the mail from my former boss at Motorola. It had been a long time since we had communicated, but she had heard through the grapevine that my father had passed away, so she sent me a sympathy card and a manila folder with several of my poems in it. I was very thankful that she sent me the card and poems, and even more thankful that she held on to those poems, which I had long forgotten and discarded, after all these years.
“What we remember” is one of those poems. It’s not exactly a supply chain poem, but it’s the day before Thanksgiving, and many of you are probably on the road or flying somewhere today, maybe going back home. Or maybe you’re just taking a mental trip to another day and time, giving thanks along the way. I’m not sure I fully understand the poem myself, but it seems appropriate for today.
Have a happy and safe Thanksgiving. Make it one worth remembering.
————
What we remember
is not the week you stayed awake
when you discovered we will sleep a third of our lives.
Nor the yellow dashes on Union Street, the two lanes
you connected—on your knees—in the middle of rush hour.
If we go back to the Wasatch Mountains, we won’t remember
the snow you packed into Styrofoam coolers, how it survived
the x-ray and the plane trip back to Phoenix.
And we have no memory of the plums you would send,
every Monday, to the only Marina in the phone book.
What we remember is packed and leaving each day.
We are beginning to sleep again,
to drive on one-way streets, to make our fractions whole.
And after all these years, we have found the desert of winter.
What we remember, you stole from us—everything else,
we want to forget: the empty parking lot at the Safeway,
the shopping carts abandoned by the light post, the night
pavement losing its desert heat, your escape and arrival
at an airport with no departing flights.
