The past comes to an end
reversing itself,
as we restore the future,
contriving to salvage
its garden
of ornate resemblance
We had pushed our memories
through cities,
trusting to find a sky
that flattened land for grasses
the unadorned could plow.
The heat was heavy with water
and the stones nudged into place glistened
alongside bits of chinaware and colored glass
travelled to set up house
(and house again)
wherein we recognized
our persons re-assembled
The two who conspired
to hold each other off
yield as one, oafish,
unable to stand upright
without a hand to help
Wings, no less unlikely,
catch the eye, averted
from the guardian’s
remote and placid gaze
above the whirlwind
of parents
driving youth back
to the old country
grandparents remembered
We go back with trowels
and wheelbarrows
to revive the grotto
with forms of promise
fulfilled and then abandoned
and hues of restlessness
inimical to settlement
The angel stays implacable,
as if a figurehead at sea
Chico, except for the one-line stanza that is opaque for me (st. 3), I find the poem very suggestive of the heritage (if that's the proper word) that our parents (and, in my case, the country of my birth) leaves us with. It shapes us and can fortify us but it also coerces us in a direction that our individuality resists.
ReplyDeleteon the grotto and ornate garden of memory and hope: angel's wings, re-creation. i wish memory were always so kind, as opposed to the broken shards of glass, the abdomen gored!!
ReplyDeletethe hope of the individual and of the ancestors is likely what compels all good fools to carry on.
it might be good to choose one metaphor (garden or grotto) and carry it forward.
as always, your ideas are most compelling.
Hey Joe, Thanks for the comment. Could be that one line stanza is just the humidity. Chico
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