Let Me Write That Down

“Let me write that down.”
Her pencil scrawls a dozen words.
Another line is added to the notes
of what she had to eat,
of who came round, who rang,
and what they said.
They are not like shopping lists,
appointments – written down
to guide the reader, map-pins
for a future date and time.
These words are for the moment –
once written, they become the past.

But don’t suppose they do not matter.
She guards those notebooks,
clutches them in arthritic fingers
to the end. When other words
have been forgotten,
or filed away in cobwebbed
storerooms of the brain
those trembling lines
will be the stuff of her;
not just the record
but the breath and heartbeat
of a  human mind.