The Past, the Past, the Past . . .

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem

The past, the recent past, is so far gone

That it and other pasts are mist-pale spheres

Unborn, and spheres that never were, a dawn

That never happened, even less than smears,

The lightest gray ones.  Yesterday goes blank

And even blanker, years yet blanker still.

It turns out time is more a mountebank

Forgotten, forcing us to hanker still

For more to be forgotten, not recalled.

Our deepest memory vaults are filled but locked.

For us they are not there.  Our past is walled,

Imprisoned Pope who never was, defrocked.

  Millennia might just as well have passed

    Since what we held is less than scrubbed out Past.

 © Phillip Whidden