Forgetting

I look through my window
           out
                    toward Sutro                                                  Tower.
Clouds fade
in
       and
 past,
         cover it grey
                  then
             fade
back
       into the light.



As I read -
               sleep -
                         dream -
                                     wake-                   
                                                 I forget that tower is             there.

Nine

Hundred

&

Seventy
-
Seven

feet


It watches over
        me
          .

Nostalgia for Sepia

In her poem Beasts, Kay Ryan eloquently writes of a fascination for old, rusted, sepia-toned photographs and lost objects. Not everyone enjoys facing their "rainbow beasts," but for me, I can't get enough of the past. A past not even my own is one worth reflecting on. There is so much the imagination can spill upon a found image but only hope to wonder who, where, why it was created.   

Time lingers
quietly in attics.
Romantics are
always fingering
some discolored
fabric or other,
feeling a deep
nostalgia for sepia,
a mellow sadness
at what keeps
but yellows.
But other people
don’t trust ambering
or court the filigrees
of rust. They’ve
seen lost greens
of memory ignite,
dead dogs released,
and don’t invite
the rainbow beasts.

(Photo above was found here.)