like a delayed signal—
you can almost feel
the switches ganging on,
or something momentarily
caught, a clog,
in a drain,
before, at last, the train of memory
comes chugging through,
flags flying,
bringing magnanimous
to the station, like a candidate
on a whistle-stop tour,                   
                   
or
it’s as if you’d submitted
a request for a rare cartographer’s tome
in an elegant library reading room,
and waited patiently, under
the chandeliers, by the brass
lamps, until a tiptoeing
librarian wearing
white gloves put it into
your hands—Castellammare del Golfo!—
and its syllables canter, tossing
their manes, down a cobblestone street
to a brilliantly flashing sea.

From Shimmer (WordTech, 2012).
This poem first appeared in SNReview.
Used here with permission.