Ghosts of lost or broken objects
trouble us. Keys, can openers,
hi-fi equipment, power drills,
plumbing parts, TVs, toys
from best forgotten childhoods,
pocketknives, cook pots, screwdrivers,
cars that died on the highway.
These linger, haunting the low ground
of our bank accounts, trilling
like peepers in bloodstained dawn.
Sometimes they brush against us
in memory of better times.
Sometimes we spot them sulking
in the corners of our vision.
Others have written about loss
and rendered it graceful. Days
of wine and goat cheese picnics, nights
with friends who died in their sleep.
Elegies of tender regard draped
in colors worn by royalty
when breeding wasn't just for dogs.
We're too petty for such curlicues
of sentiment. My favorite hammer,
my model trains, my green sweater.
Your yellow blouse, your shoes that fit,
your Kitchen Aid mixer, the gloves
you wore on that cold night walking
from the hotel to the operal house.
Our landscapes are haunted by refuse.
Don't you think it's time to exorcise
the nether regions of our lives?
We must clean up after ourselves
and learn to forget those objects
whose mundane spirits promise
no comfort after we're dead.
How shall we return?
The hinge of oysters?
The glint in silt?
Salt's nomadic grit
that powders
autumn air and woodland fern?
Eyes will mourn
what dawn devours.
The quartz-bright gilt
of stars at night
once was ours
and now returns
to elemental form:
the nectar of flowers,
the delicate lilt
of summer light
as it pours
and softly burns
into dream. Careworn,
our eyes are thick
with dew and silk-
soft mists that we wear like a grave-cloth loosely bound.
