Flash (Another Alaska Photograph) #5

Even the eyes     — looking away from all of it —
even the mind's long hand

and musty occupations     — your mother's words —
wearing the looks of curios —

even this afternoon I think     — with all its allusions
breaking down     — where

I have been keeping keys     / where I am restored
by their own     / by our own May-goings

and thanksgivings     — ask me to see the parts —
to share the unending light

in every origin and ending     — the answers themselves —
assuming history     — in scenes we restore

/ for every inch of their exposures     — for all
of this distance when fogs lift —

imagined in lives beyond the fables and disguises —
unmarried and some place once —

then married and dead     — their own child dead
in her ninth decade     — and nowhere

at all maybe     — except in this once and then
in all the evidence of endings —

the shops and horse-wide paths     — the moving
documents     — where villages were

/ were lost     — and the cloud-light fell
and feathered the conclusions —

where there had been shops and regulars
/ serious livelihoods

not even a nothern village
could hold to.

 

© Appetite (2)