Dark Charms


Eventually the future shows up everywhere:
the burly summers and unslept nights
in deep lines and dark splotches, thinning skin.
Here is the corner store grown to a condo,
the bike reduced to one spinning wheel,
the ghost of a dog that used to be, her trail,
no longer trodden, just a dip in the weeds.
The clear water we drank as thirsty children
still runs through our veins. Stars we saw then
we still see now, only fewer, dimmer, less often.
The old tunes play and continue to move us,
in spite of our learning, the wraith of romance,
lost innocence, literature, the death of the poets.
We continue to speak, if only in whispers,
to something inside us that longs to be named.
We name it the past and drag it behind us,
bag like a lung filled with shadow and song,
dreams of running, the keys to lost names.

-Dorianne Laux (The Pedestal Magazine)

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