Passages

Strange how ... and where ... poems sometimes reveal themselves to a person.

As I recall, I was sitting in the car in front of a Post Office, waiting for Phyllis to go in, mail a letter, and return.

I noticed the reflections of the vehicles going by on the street behind me ... how the warped window made them appear to be leaping ... like horses or hunting hounds ... bounding over a hedge.

I thought about reflections I had seen in store windows in my home town ... and of one window, in particular, on one of my last visits there. That store was now vacant. Oh, the memories I had of that little country store!

Then the poem started asserting itself ... I reached for a scrap of paper ... always waiting in a handy pocket ... and began writing.

The poem:

PASSAGES

The cars change shape

as they come and go

in the warped window glass

of a store that once was,

dusty now, this begrimed

keeper of secrets,

these windows that

have seen it all

in this small town: deaths,

funerals, weddings, births,

departures of its young

who sometimes come back,

stand beside a grave,

listen to an acorn falling,

slow ticking of eternity.

© 2007

(originally published in Waterways, Vol. 28, #5, 2007)