It’s All We Have

         It’s All We Have

The landscape that we know touchingly we

Refer to as the present.  It is what

We map and that is all.  We cannot see

The facts of other times or see the strut

Of future or of past.  “The noo,” as Scots

Pronounce it, is our limit.  We pretend

To read the past but it is gaps and blots

In incunabula .  To apprehend

It is at best lacuna and lost scrolls

In hieroglyphs hard coded.  Tomorrow

Hides, knowable to none of unborn souls

Who may not ever be.  We know sorrow.

..We know boredom and coal flares’ yellow joy.

…..Gold Helen could not conjure melted Troy.