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Under a Winding Blacktop

Slow or fast
we think behind a slip stream,
a contrail of the gone;
of what went by a momentary window
            long ago.

Asleep under a blacktop,
street-cars roll over my me-mind,
the crunch of old bones
    crackles like thin ice.
I am recalling a time
            now set in resin.

Desiccated bugs bite through,
gnaw at half-painted pictures.
Lost paths
  for the somnambulant dead.
Elephants gather to revisit graveyards.

Alive in a memory,
but let’s not call this 'living,'
      double, treble dipping
      into the time-worn.
Such old imagining's will eventually
kill every analog clock
with their own internal hammers.

What am I writing now?
Yesterday and tomorrow sway
like old measuring scales.
Should I think like a Greek,
                            or a Jew,
arise and dance
shaking my head back and forth
                          as if awakening
            to every fleeting pause?

This is what I am writing
upon the underside
of a road...
        an odyssey of sorts
one taken by a horde of lemmings.
        A talking point
indicating how I got here
recalling this and that,
but then again
          nothing is now real forever.

Copyright © Eric Ashford

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