Setting Things Up for the Memory




Urgency fades as if it were a full bladder
drained by the slow piss of years.
Arguments that ended
like arms caught in machinery
heal over.  The right hand of purpose
grows back like a toenail.

There are compliments, no doubt, we would
like to give but can’t, things that won’t
be said until years from now, if ever.
There are plants we could prune,
flowerbeds we could weed, but
we have decided to abandon the garden,
let gates grow rusty, the paintjob peel.
It is time to move on, to let the house crumble.

And it will; and it will be there,
every time we go back to visit,
in all its splendid ruin.

John Amen's poetry, fiction, and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in various publications, including Poetry Bay Magazine, The Adirondack Review, The Melic Review, among others. Amen has toured extensively as a performing musician, both as a solo act and with a band, and has released three full-length recordings, Wild but Willing, Eat Mine, and Four Forty Four. He is editor in chief of the online literary bimonthly The Pedestal Magazine. 
E-mail: jamen32499@aol.com


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