searching, looking….for something I can’t find.
Nothing but an empty field now,
outlined by brand new curbs
a framework of what once was.
The street that once claimed 100 homes -
a community diverse – Italian, Polish, African American, Mexican, Irish;
different accents, faint voices – now long gone;
grandparents now settled in their graves,
kids grown and off to new spaces.
I keep going back...
gazing at the spot where the childhood home stood,
nothing reminiscent of my time there save an old tree or two.
The carcass of a school playground and
the old church at the corner
the remaining vestiges
of childhood play.
Still I see everything,
silhouettes that materialize for a moment
evaporating before I get too close -
achingly near, but just out of reach.
I keep going back,
bits and pieces of the past...
Mr. Scavone's pigeons
whose ancestors search for bread
now at new locales.
Elderly crone, the old lady Woods,
neighborhood witch,
taunted by merry pranksters
secretly afraid,
now haunts only in memories
of the aging adult child.
I keep going back
as if I’ll find it this time -
this thing I cannot name
that haunts me with promises
of a rendezvous that can’t occur…
striving to find moments long past
or perhaps,
just something or someone to remember me back…
Still I go back time and again,
searching the unsearchable,
leaving empty, unfulfilled.
Looking for something I’ll never find
except in transient moments in my head.
Ghosts appear and fade away….
