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Likenesses
This body that I am now forced to own
once was a glove for desiring hands, and
a hand for the warm fitting-rooms of strangers.
I am an owner of derelict houses.
their roofs and walls unrecognizable
In the harsh light of a dawn mirror.
Parts of this ‘me’ still are affixed
to the pages of put-away scrapbooks
albums of disinherited images
Once upon-a-time forms
now lay buried in fallow fields
memorial plots,
visited by ailing angels
that keep alive transient likenesses
in shoeboxes of heavenly haunts.
Looking at this that I have become
I wonder what part I played
In the ruination of my castle keep,
what parts the attrition of decades
have reduced a temple
into a place where seagulls
fight for scapes in a perishing landscape?
Let grace be my life-raft,
let the young be my saviors,
but of course any rescue now
must be only a weakening gesture,
a fist shaken at the unchanging stars.
Copyright ©
Eric Ashford
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