Dark Charms
– Dorianne Laux
Eventually the future shows up everywhere:
those burly summers and unslept nights in deep
lines and dark splotches, thinning skin.
Here’s the corner store grown to a condo,
the bike reduced to one spinning wheel,
the ghost of a dog that used to be, her trail
no longer trodden, just a dip in the weeds.
The clear water we drank as thirsty children
still runs through our veins. Stars we saw then
we still see now, only fewer, dimmer, less often.
The old tunes play and continue to move us
in spite of our learning, the wraith of romance,
lost innocence, literature, the death of the poets.
We continue to speak, if only in whispers,
to something inside us that longs to be named.
We name it the past and drag it behind us,
bag like a lung filled with shadow and song,
dreams of running, the keys to lost names.
For more information on Dorianne Laux, please click here: http://doriannelaux.com/
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Alison McGhee 
Wow. Love this one.
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This is a beautiful poem. Thank you.
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This has moved me to tears.
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Tessa and Rebecca, I love this one too. “We call it the past and drag it behind us. . .” Can’t get that particular line out of my head.
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Ellie: me too. XO
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