The Bygones
Eroding names on long-faced headstones,
a small graveyard marooned on a patch of past;
long rooted and confined while beside it
2022 blares unseeing past the forgotten lot.
An old-fangled America right there
forgotten crypts
tucked between gas station and strip mall,
a small deposit of once horse-drawn bones
amid a modern thoroughfare.
A haze of traffic emissions half-hides the secreted,
the tucked away,
yet, there are whispers on mossy mounds,
mouthless echoes of forked-over farmers,
matrons of dispersed parishes,
tanners wrapped in musty mule skins.
An olden daze leans toward us,
tilts into the present, slides sideways into
a ‘Wendy's’ car-park.
Voices sweat into the skin of a biker filling his tank;
beneath his dew rag they wetly whisper.
He shudders in the warm sunlight,
thinks about a lime phosphate soda
long defunct.
A cloudy memory follows a teenager
toward a newly opened store,
but the new won’t thrive long.
Nothing around here survives
longer than the bygones.
Copyright © Eric Ashford | Year Posted 2022
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