I hold you in my wallet, to keep you safe from harm
in a fading store of memory, with our devalued currency –
a little worn with use and age, but easy to access;
an aperture into a version of our past, above revision
once framed by shutter speed, in silver salts or pixels /
or inked in composition, rolled out by the press /
or sketched in charcoal strokes, brushed by human touch;
a fragment in a narrow view, blurred in shallow field…
Except there is always an act, an outside intervention:
the fleeting gravity of looking – itself irrelevant –
gone to seek transparency where none exists, instead
reflecting back a composite (of me and you; of now and then)
and composing a reflection, to evoke my thoughts and feelings
without asking or concerning how they could be requited
or if that moment’s image had been perfect or a lie
or something in between, a flaw pursuing life?
Because you are not mine, or ours, or motion drawing breath
but a chameleon’s subtle model, to represent reality
in flakes of time torn off the torrent in its flight, snagged
while other things that were once new have aged in turn,
grown into the fabric before fading away – while you remain,
a tainted arrowhead lodged against a nerve
that leaves a wound infected by the presence of our past
and a seed to germinate belief in never letting go…
(revised from version posted in early May 2018)
Maintain the Advance! 