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And quite recently, I
wrote another poem also

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called "The Past."

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This is the third one.

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"You try to keep the present
uppermost in your mind,

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counting its
blessings, which today

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are many because, although
you are not without hope

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for the world, crazy as that
seems to your gloomier friends

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and often to yourself, yet
your own hopes have shrunk.

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Options are less abundant.

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Ages ago, you enjoyed thinking
of names for a daughter.

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Later you still entertained
at least as hypothesis

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the notion of a not impossible
love, requited passion,

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or resolved modestly to learn
some craft, various languages.

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And all those sparks of
future winked out behind you,

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forgettable.

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So the present, its
blessings many today.

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The fresh or ornate blossoms
of the simplest trees

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a sudden irregular
pattern everywhere,

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audacious white, flamingo
pink in a haze of early warm.

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But perversely, it's
not what you crave.

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You want the past.

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Oh, not your own.

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No reliving of
anything, no, what

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you hanker after is a compost,
a forest floor thick, saturate,

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fathoms deep, palimpsestuous.

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Its surface a mosaic of
infinitely fragile, lacy,

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tenacious skeleton leaves.

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When you put your ear
to that odorous ground,

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you can catch the unmusical,
undefeated, belling note

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as of a wounded stag
escaped triumphant.

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Of lives long gone."

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