The time to have put away
certain memory foamed longings
may have already passed
years ago. Sitting in driveways
(always someone else’s)
and staring at the damage
of front lawns
made a mockery of by cell phone towers
in the distance
transforming simplicity
by stunting our dreams, lost roads
and small blessings- all that the photo eye
can take in.
As children we were never able
to make the necessary separations
between our experience of a place
and the actual inertness of the ground.
To be many worlds apart from the familiar
can send our loss back
to its competing history,
when was I here last?
And who was I then? And what now?
I notice there are fine lines
and burdens that cost more
than direct devastation,
yet still something very serious,
I think, is slipping out, a beyond-
where reach will become
no longer possible, for us.
