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“Welcome to the Past”
By Douglas John Imbrogno
It is lovely here, this place you call the past,
but which is my present. We meet in the middle,
upon this bridge of words.
Something crashes through the branches and lands
(with an OOMPH!) upon the ground. Maybe a
dead branch. Some degenerate bit of matter.
Maybe a remarkable event, a daytime meteorite,
some cosmic spit. Over there, a fleecy cloud
blankets half the sky. Trees clutter the horizon.
One blushes red, yellow, orange, for it is
Autumn’s end. Soon, all the leaves will starve
and become as kaleidoscopes and die …
Except for the reliable evergreens, which when the
snows come will hold it up for inspection. And when
it grows too heavy, at some moment impossible
to prophesize, the pat of snow will be released.
Plop onto the mantle of the earth.
And in such a way, the Zen master tells
the archery student, should you release the bow,
and also, when that time comes,
your hold upon this life.
………
1984 | huntington.wv
