It captures with such subtlety and unrelenting detail that sense of aging and place that I have felt each time I've returned to my hometown, where my parents' front door, which once squeaked and slammed with regularity (tacos for 20 - cheese steaks for 15 kids after back yard basketball) now hangs still on its hinges. They had only 4 trick or treaters last night. Their world has gone quiet. Still. They are no less present for having aged.
What stories glint and hide in that hazy backdrop?
Straightpins
Growing up in a small town,
we didn't notice
the background figures of our lives,
gray men, gnarled women,
dropping from us silently
like straightpins to a dressmaker's floor.
The old did not die
but simply vanished
like discs of snow on our tongues.
We knew nothing then of nothingness
or pain or loss—
our days filled with open fields,
football,
turtles and cows.
One day we noticed
Death has a musty breath,
that some we loved
died dreadfully,
that dying
sometimes takes time.
Now, standing in a supermarket line
or easing out of a parking lot,
we realize
we've become the hazy backgrounds
of younger lives.
How long has it been,
we ask no one in particular,
since we've seen a turtle
or a cow?
Well, if it's any help, I saw a turtle just a month ago, and cows abound just down the road. This poem made me cry. Your hazy friend, dimming daily in a dust-mote driven haze...Morgan CR
ReplyDeleteha! anything but hazy, my German-spewing near famous friend. This is a poem that wouldn't let me go. Glad you liked it, too.
ReplyDelete