Monument

What we trace on cobbled streets

like ink patterns, reproduced,

blankets of remembrance muffling shapes, 

these fossil formations, imprints of absence

like museum lives
we tour in whispers:

 

only postcards in a dusty box

gathered by names that are lost

because nothing was written, no stamp, 

only yellowed Niagara still falling

in antique shops we sift like shell pickers

in old buildings carefully kept 

or warehouse ruins and faded signs,

their dim light at night

resembling music, 

sounds lifting like air

when the moon shapes a mountain

cresting clouds blue from the dark. 

We sat in a corner window

with a view of the river

where birds tossed like leaves 

landing in tatters on a monument

done in marble and brick,

scarcely touching before gusting in circles again, 

black in the sky,

flashing silver when they turned.

 

                                                                             Cheryl Emerson

                                                                                                7/1/2013