Vincent Spina: Passengers

So what you are saying is

that we exist? There are crumbs

of evidence: along a fossil seashore

a pair of footprints buried in ashes

to be discovered, sized up

to an hypothesis we can grasp

and hold in our hands—that love

once flourished here along with the usual

suspects of stops and starts, hopes and

desolations like those flocks of birds

—what was their name?—that darkened skies for days

with migration we don’t see anymore,

only tree branches as evidence bent

by the weight of their absence. In the best

of times it was best to keep a sage distance—

a stiff upper lip. These days

diving into wrecks may produce only

more names for home.

And what you say is true: ghost trains

making and remaking clay eating

and drinking vessels we put on display

in rooms where our most living

took place—living rooms breathing

the old breath and ours, like the strands

of an endless tapestry reaching out.

But are we there?

I find less me each day, spend

whole mornings and afternoons mending

pieces, filling cracks. Yet here we are,

another room the house itself has locked out.

Bad or good?

For now lips are suffered to remember

the first tremor of things gone wrong,

things loved, things mistaken. The tea

may still be warm as are the trifles

we serve to each other.

Copyright 2018 Vincent Spina

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