Dear Photographic Memory,

Look, a house!
By the cemetery,
A town for a ghost,
A sister and me,
Where fallen leaves
Filled the cradle,

Where I'd say speak to me,
A language on your shoulder blades.
Whisper with your hands,
New words for old demands, designs to extract,
To obtain, and then destroy;
Something heartbreakingly beautiful.

Fading from the picture
In the folded newspaper,
Is a hand on the window
And footprints in sawdust,
And the scent of cherry blossom trees,
And a cradle mounted by fallen leaves.

When long ago
This image contained
A boy sinking sideways
Into the picture frame,
With wide green eyes
And a shape so deceiving,

And from a living sky,
A sunset retreating...
This scene was marked
But inevitably became lost
Among heirlooms and keepsakes,
Buried in the ground, lost,

While rain beat on the grate,
I stumbled upon this old box,
A dusty, wounded crate,
Drawn with spider webs and tape.
A part time archeologist,
Employed by my boyish wonder,
My pay checks signed by
My pension for wistful remembering.

I sat cross legged in the crawl space,
Down with the dirt and soot,
And the crackle of the fire place.
I picked over the blue prints;
The pictures and letters,
And I traced the history of a house
Erected by a cemetery.

Where I'd say Lie with me
A little longer, till day comes,
Demands that came from abandon,
Designs that came from adolescence,
I barely understood them myself.
I preferred the gray sky to a sunny day,
But didn't know why. I would stroll
Down the halls of the house like a ghost.
Like the many ghosts in the pictures,
Like the tired, used up men who built it.

I too feel this home is a labour,
Something understood through geography,
When I run my hands along the railings,
I'm touching memories inscribed in material,
I am privy to a story told in the knots and bricks
That appear like messages in invisible ink.

What's in me I wonder?
Am I made of similar things?
I am somehow lead to believe
That such mystery is impossible now,
It is saved for old, dead things,
Preserved for that rugged, ancient world.
Yet, when I touch the fireplace,
When I walk across the wood floors
I feel a part of a timeless sadness,
A slow, turning seriousness-
This old world reserve is an imprint,
like the knots in the railing,
or the spots of paints on the golden bricks,
I am marked by these ghosts.
I have grown with their grim knowledge.