Poetry
Playing Tennis with the Past
The problem with the past
is that it wants to seduce us,
twist, deceive, reduce us,
make us think we’ve outgrown it
as we’re quietly arranging
the next tryst – care to hit a few?
The problem with the past
is that it’s homeless,
desperate but rarely hopeless.
We are its hope, its host,
its sustenance, its mark.
The past knows our weaknesses
better than we know our strengths.
It remembers what we were,
and also what we thought we were
(or could be, or ought to be)
before it showed us we weren’t;
not even close.
The problem with the past
is that it wants to be present,
but arrives out of order,
like a Burroughs cut-up.
Not even real. Not even past,
as Faulkner said – but always there,
the fractional moon that follows
when we travel, its uncertain light
spilling over nations that no longer
exist, their sovereign borders
worn away like the painted boundaries
of a forgotten tennis court.
Rough Diamond Hope Anthology, Summer 2024