Home Archeology

.Wading back east                                       
into the city
       of gray-brown
like a nineteenth century painting
brushed with
a pale wash
of dusk

Sifting through the dust
of a farther-back time                                                  
remembering                              
the older books
    and the histories
    they contained
before the civil war

Pahn asks
                  himself
why he has neglected that time
and the good stories there

why he was afraid of them
                                                  those aged crispy pages
                         from that place no longer living
            dry and undisturbed

like a library
                   of leaves

the repository

                             of sleep

.

.