Decades pass as if in the blink of an eye:
remember the day we found the coffee table
in the thrift shop, among boxes of broken tile?
We thought we'd be here only for so long,
putting up with one bad rental then another---
Decades passed as if in the blink of an eye.
In a dog-eared copy of Heraclitus I keep going back
to that passage about stepping into the same river twice. But
in the thrift shop you find useful things in boxes of broken tile.
That's how immigrants slowly build the landscapes of a life--
desk, lamp, chair: new bits mixed with pieces others cast
away. Then decades pass as if in the blink of an eye.
Remember the filthy basement with rundown laundry machines,
the drafty windows we taped with plastic in the winter? Odds
and ends in the thrift shop, among boxes of broken tile.
Every effort costs at least twice more when you
have lives and loves in more than one place on
the earth. How did decades pass so quickly? Stories
in the thrift shop, among boxes of broken tile.
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
Beautiful and true, Like.