Nostalgeurysm

Sick of gilding these childhood vignettes.
The world doesn't need another poet
whose eyes have rolled back into his skull.
The world doesn't need. Clumsy fingers
on father's model trains, learning the snap
of old plastic, how it breaks like asparagus
at the laziest of its molecules. Mother calling
from the back deck for PB&Js, quartered
and waiting under the umbrella. Tent
in the backyard: flashlight fireflying
inside a Chinese lantern. Those electric sprints
across the lawn, barefoot on night green
with summer's damp sleep roiling
up into our nostrils. They happened.
They were lived through with the same attention
given to this park bench, this afternoon.
Waypoints in a retreat through time
to where present disappointments transmute
the restless boredom of another age.

Copyright © 2007 John Thomas All rights reserved
from Center
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission