Distance Is Distance
How long does it take to invent
new nostalgia, do we measure
the distance in years, one year,
five years, twelve, or in miles,
thousands of them. Distance
is distance, either will work.
Train the eyes to settle over
the brick and stone of a place,
and the muscles behind your
eyes remember: here, an arch,
a 24-hour library, a bench, pale
tile of a lobby flecked with green
and black, a tree exactly where
you expect a tree to be though
you didn’t recall the tree itself,
explicitly. You know this place,
meaning, your body knows
where to go, and for that, you
feel grateful. All the things that
had not happened to you when
you were last here, oceans
yet unvisited, heart missing the
more recent dents. That distance,
that difference, you feel it,
it travels with you, back to now,
aims its lamp over the ordinary
to inoculate you with prenostalgia,
saying, you will dream of this
one day, the chipped windowsill,
the gate’s yelp in closing.
Ah yes, nostalgia. I remember it.
ReplyDeleteGreat query of the time frame.
Gracias
Love these lines: "inoculate you with prenostalgia"; "the gate's yelp in closing." Funny how nostalgia can arise in the middle of experience...the strange yearning for the thing that's here (but in being here, passing). Thanks for the poem.
ReplyDeleteThis poem is incredibly painfully beautiful...I was feeling nostalgic as I drove to work this morning and I had to slap myself out of it...so incredible how you capture the way our minds work...btw, I could not add comment in bloglovin...I suppose it is only a reader?thank you for this lovely poem hannah
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