I went back,
and took photographs of the past.
What’s left of grass and old weed.
Houses that remain,
ready to be called to oblivion,
the house of my birth,
the street of my childhood.
Ancient memories.
Granite stones that glitter
with quartz faces.
Looking down the deserted avenue
of Warren Street,
Sandusky as it was,
old ghosts remaining there,
the railroad tracks gone,
the separated street
joined by a boulevard of gravel and weeds.
My heart thins in the paleness of the sky.
In the camera it is a vast emptiness.
A street somewhere in a place of empty wind.
Open.
Open as if everything was blowing away.
Nothing brought back.
Houses being deserted.
Windows left open.
Rafters howling above the vacant corners.
I was not lost.
I was not sad.
I felt nothing at all,
or at least nothing that wept,
called out,
huddled from the openness.
The people were gone,
the houses made of cardboard,
mildewed,
sagging from the years.
I was not here
when the last soul deserted.
When someone with tired eyes
gazed at the street and died.
My voice lost its sound.
My lips did not move.
I did not call out
or tremble at my loss.
The photographs will help me see
the curtain of the day
close on the bay.
Remind me of what happened.
I remember the ephemeral dandelions,
violets, pennies smashed on the rails
by the trains.
The rest is the Pillars of Hercules,
the lost country of childhood,
out into a clouded sea,
leaving behind these remains.
Where is my home?
Where are my loved ones?
Where did daytime go?
It is so open,
so barren,
so like an ocean rushing away,
as I look into the shutter,
and catch the last rays of sun,
falling in the water.