Lost And Amazed
When is never? EJ
No longer firmly attached
to a particular somewhere,
an old man wanders
through the maze of his past.
Places, persons, events
float up at random
like stray syllables
on a Magic Eight Ball.
Bruised decades snagged in photos.
Forgotten faces blank and ghostly.
Smiles for a misplaced something.
The entangled elegance of memory
glitters like the shards
of a crystal champagne flute,
shiny, sharp, and alluring.
Retrieve a seductive fragment.
Imagine what it might mean,
what it might have meant.
He is trapped in this crooked ruin,
no waxen wings to fly away,
no convenient Ariadne’s thread
leading back to the whole.
He must make up the meaning,
contrive his own coherence.
Lost in his desert of dreams,
a wilderness of words
swirls within his head,
verdicts to be announced,
his to accept or not,
conspiracies of joy and dread.
