H-I-S-T-O-R-Y, Time's Footprints

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

Sometimes, we can be walking along without a care in the world, and then we spot something, as often as not quite trivial, that triggers a chain reaction taking us to places we would have much preferred to avoid…and once there, struggle to find our way back again.

It is true to say that time's footprints are sometimes those of hobnail boots, all but obliterating any prints that have gone before although, as an open heart is to bigotry, so humanity is to inhumanity, and all the more capable of regeneration. 

H-I-S-T-O-R-Y, TIME'S FOOTPRINTS

Scraps of a letter floating down a gutter,

pricking the occasional comfort zone

Wondering about blue ink stains, inwardly

debating the when, whose, and why

Doesn’t matter, of course, all history now,

heading in pieces for the nearest drain

Yet, someone had once made time to write,

feel, read (send?) decide to throw away

Secrets passing between lovers found out,

and punished, disowned…ever forgiven?

Friends, family, stranded on opposite sides

of some socio-cultural-religious divide?

Had someone discovered, betrayed, turned

finer feelings into anonymous ink stains?

Tearful, over scraps of a letter, potentially

sucking the life out of any one of us

Bad memories eagerly mowed down by rolls

of thunder, over anxious to leave no trace

Rain! Gutter, a river, scraps gone to sewage

under a city that stinks of rotten secrets

[Note: An earlier version of this poem appears in Accomplices To Illusion by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2007]