The lights don’t reach the far corners of this basement.
And a puddle has formed near the back stairs.
Through the window well you hear rain dripping off the roof.
Me? I’m knee deep in the litter and leftovers of our family’s
lifetimes, I’ve got to pare it down.
Got to get over being gripped in the familiar, the rediscovered
– stalled in recollection.
We nearly put out ma’s art deco dresser last week.
But then I caught a bitter taste, a hurt enlivened, and of course
I love you.
You thought it had style, or that it would surely come back in vogue.
So I’ll keep that well made, kind of ugly dresser.
For now at least.
Narrow paths run between islands of our collective history.
It can’t all be precious, portentous, collectable.
And it’s getting cold down here.
Get some hot tea. Plod on.
Keep distilling - imagined pasts from this crazy quilt,
this arrangement, we call the present.
Habituated.
But I don’t have the nerve to set it all out in garbage bags,
or leave it boxed and moldering in these damp corners
The deeds are done. What’s left, some threadbare traces?
Priceless moments once, of anticipation, pay off, consequence.
Should we conjure up all that again?
Why?
The boxed, the stacked, are beyond our shabby efforts to measure,
find an explanation, maybe some relief.
Could it have been otherwise?
Lived lives, tucked into time, like tired children in their beds,
in sleep too deep for dreams.