Wraiths

In youth there were days of such blinding splendor

that in each scratched and faded photograph we're wincing,

as if we were all staring at the sun in our backyards, 

collectively waiting for some fantastic rapture to descend.

In those times I knew every fire road like my own skin,

every bone and vein of those rutted secret trails

carving at the forests beyond the neighborhood.

This was my topography, our permanent abandon.

Now those lines have trailed away into hovering mist

between bent branches, disappearing beneath leaves and logs

or ensnared in the rusted teeth of bear traps yawning metallically.

Now the timber paths have sung their last refrain,

and haunted, shrink softly into the horizon.