thrift

national geographic april 1965
'appomattox'
'brittany'
'new york fair'
'man-in-sea'

suitcase record player,
stack of beloved country records,
'music for dining' in green,
candle-wax spray on the table-top (milky-white),
wine-stain,(blood-red rings on wood-grain),
.

if i make the right list
i can reconstruct the occasion
of objects, who lived-out their wooden life in old(er) atmosphere,

i can raise their ghosts if i want to,
and plug the holes that were left by now-dissapated clouds.

the other night, my things
exuded colors like lamps,
(shades of):
green jealousy,
yellow claustrophobia,
red anger
white clarity.

i don't know what i am trying to say
but i know it has something to do with the light;
milky-rain light of today,
cold wet light of driven-through fog on the highway to alpine,
broken bottle light of mason jars like castanets.

if i understood the quality of this light falling,
cloud-like (first cloud: pikes peak, colorado, more fluffy, less wet),
maybe i could find myself pin-pricked within it,
headlights through fog,
fast appearing and carrying stains of rain on the pavement behind,

or evergreen-tops,
fast spires spinning like green corkscrews,
as we rode by them in loud ferries.

in here it is face-blast-space-heater and dryer hum,
a nostalgia of sound:
zipper thwack on metal drum,
static electric sound of childhood,
(like dishwasher sounds it puts me to sleep).

how little could i leave?
what husk would tell the real story,
the inside tale,
the detritus-key-map-decoder (trailed)?

are the things we find in dusty thrift stores any indications of our real life?

march 12, 2009 elg