Some haunt me pleasantly,
Using the grains of dewy silence that speak loudly
Within the long, grey halls of history.
I recline on such images with smiles I borrow from
The penetralia of my soul and skin.
Behind them come lean trees denuded by the swift
Gales of re-greened winters that celebrated
Friendliness in the course of wondrous seasons.
I peer deeply at them, genuflecting to Time
For its abundance of grace and reflections.
A spell of the past descends generously on me,
Navigating genially through the winding routes of
General ancestry.
They must be black, with the silhouettes I crave —
And white —with the silky mildews that glue together
Dispersed unity of the fragile present.
They transport me back to where I should have
Been but couldn’t be, through the nostalgia for
Where I was —only on sufferance.