Here is where I retreat,
under yawning bark and view
releasing a tiny, forgotten universe
held together by lashings of memory.
I imagine owning the fabulous adornments
of a reckless youth, brittle inventions
or useful battle scars, the bright ferment
giving birth to aged sighs, a slow release.
To sit and sift through novels of a past
that feels real by its invention
with old rocking-chair men poring through
dusty tabloids of shuttered, bygone hopes,
cursing and loving the past in lamentations,
possessing it again in monochrome
under cover of roofs, hats, denials.
Devotion in this place takes no shape
dissolving out of reach and view,
though the past is always underfoot.
Or we invent it without seeing, without knowing
we have pinned all our hopes to its mast,
much as the earth astounds the castaway skies,
bracing the stars, the dream’s quiet music.