Tag: Nostalgia

The Old House: 1978-2023

Published on by @DwPolkLeave a comment

this is the place
where i once lived
basement tv, saturday sugar
cereal, endless ping pong
mowing the lawn and
shooting driveway basketball hoops
sledding as a child
reading by the fireplace
blasting the beasties upstairs
on the old stereo
ice cream birthday cakes
hide and go seek
learning how to shave
and juggle bean bags
talent shows with sunglasses
and the elvis moves
staring at jumping squirrels
outside my bedroom window
a home once ours
now is no more

At McKay’s

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the poetry section is a jumble of
paperbacks, anthologies, Chaucer
Elizabeth Bishop, Neruda, Donne
Dickinson, page after bent page
used books, leaning paper spines
the dead supporting each other
most of their words long forgotten
USA $29.95, once the price of wisdom
now two dollars, time erases money
and memories of Isla Negra
Amherst lilacs, and all the rest

Self-Checkout

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no more checkout clerks
at the grocery store
now it is us and the machine
little bar codes, red light
that beeping sound of
credit card accumulating debt
and no one smiles anymore
or says hello, or says
how about that football game
no, that is all in the past
now it is us and the machine
and sometimes we wonder
is this progress?

Baseball Cards

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i’ve begun to hold you again
colorful cardboard portal
young men gripping bats
like no one ever ages

i used to take you for granted
trade you, shove you into
shoe boxes, stacking Tigers
and Orioles, reading statistic
after statistic, the only math
that ever made sense

now with gray hair, you are
mine again, behind plastic
i cradle delicate memory
this time around i know
nothing lasts forever