The Bygones

Eroding names on long-faced headstones. Graves marooned in a patch of the past while 2019 blares unseeing around the forgotten lot. An old-fangled America tucked between gas station and strip mall, a small deposit of once horse-drawn bones. A haze of traffic emissions half-hides the secreted, the tucked away, the half seen, yet, there are whispers on mossy mounds, mouth-lost echoes of forked-over farmers, matrons of dispersed parishes, tanners still reeking of raw mule skins An olden daze leans toward us, tilts into our future, slides discreetly sideways 'round a ‘Wendy's’ car-park. A biker filling his tank; beneath his dew rag. voices sweat into his skin, he shudders in the warm sunlight, thinks about a cold soda long defunct. A cloudy memory follows a teenager, toward a newly opened store, but it won’t live long. Nothing around here survives longer than the bygones.