It seems as years add on to years
My cane is the closest friend I know
I find that I reminisce more and more
To my attic I often go.
It is a place that knows no day or night
The weather is stale but always fair
No windows to let the present in
Far too often now I’m there.
I’ve come to distinguish certain memories
Simply by their special smell
Above the moth balls beyond the dust
I recall that box of roses all too well.
That ancient and faded box lies smashed
With its nearly mummified remains
Yet time can never take away
The day they were exchanged.
I run my wrinkled fingers over tennis shoes
That “rode a twenty-inch bike all over hell”
That’s what my mother said, god if she only knew
But she is no longer here to tell.
A thousand rotting books from yesterday
Most every story time’s erased
Near every hour I enjoyed in them
Time has managed to deface.
Catcher’s mitts, bikes and fishin’ poles
Stand as trophies of things I used to do
Very few of these things get used anymore
For most are rusted or broken in two.
I came across some photos in an envelope
On each I’d carefully penciled in the year
But most all the faces now were lacking names
It suddenly filled me up with fear.
That some forgotten younger me was on some print
In someone’s unrecognizable box of junk
On a table at a garage sale
Marked “one dollar for this trunk.”
In one evening of rage I emptied my attic
So my past could not be sold away
I built me a fire out in the yard
To say good-bye to all my yesterdays.
All of my memories quickly turned into ashes
Back to the soil and up to the sky
When the fire had gone out it set me to thinking
So I went back into the house to die…