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Debris Con Brio
An empty blue Gaulois pack lies in the weeds beside a dirt road so lonesome
its nameless;
Under willow trees in a wild spot along Route 6 a wooden chair angles slightly
away from the highway;
The walls of abandoned rooms in half-demolished tenements wear pink,
yellow, pale green like inside out Easter eggs;
The forlorn red flannel shirt flaps all year on line strung between the
apple tree and the rusty trailer.
I pause musing by lilacs still hugging the farmhouse with glass gone and wood
paintless gray:
The thriving dairy farm down the road is merely a landmark.
I would rather dream the woman whose hand clasped this red clay pot handle
in Israel 2000 years ago than meet her.
We revere the ghost of the girl who died at the curve. Her life’s banalities
are blanked: a white shimmer in the headlights
What is the word for this pleasure in traces of humans now forever
faceless?
Why are these human things, like Andrew Wyeth’s windows, better for human
absence?
Is it that some alter ego, someone like me or someone I might have been,
bequeathed this shoe, this cup, this arrowhead?
So ghosts,
So painted still-lifes,
So locks of hair in attic boxes,
So small stone artifacts in dim museums,
So all the lost human things fallen or forgotten on the way
Reverberate like cymbals and symbols:
Icons of ambiguity.
– Susan Rusmisel Ide
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