Saturday, June 12, 2021

The Dissolving Past

RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: LIFE SONGS

 

The Dissolving Past

 

Whenever anybody says

That’s in the past

Understand that the past

Does not dissolve

Like ice cream on a summer day

The past remains

Like a cloud that lingers

Like a lover’s face

Like a song that moves you

Like saving grace

 

Whenever anybody says

The past does not concern me

Be assured the past concerns us all

The past holds onto you

Like tar to feathers

Like Custer’s Last Stand

Like a trauma of the psyche

Like the plane that did not land

 

Whenever anybody says

Let’s not talk about the past

Speak of nothing else

Until the ghosts stand exposed

Until the stories are all told

Until the buried have names

Until the miseries unfold

And everything hidden

Becomes everything known

 

The past does not dissolve

Like the present it expands

It renews in a constant cycle

Of death and rebirth

 

When the past dissolves

(or is allowed to dissolve)

We are as dawdling infants

Stunted in our growth

Cursed to relive the same old

Tragedies again and again

 

The past is the present

Eternal and ubiquitous

Until we know and understand this

We know and understand nothing

 

To remember is to connect

The present with the past

With the hope of building

A better future

 


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