Mon 16 May 2022
Ephemera
Posted by PJ under my poetry, poetry
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Somebody knows who that is—
or they did, once,
and maybe they told their kids,
or maybe they did not,
before they themselves became
just another old photograph
of strangers.
Faint pencil markings on the back
sometimes give cryptic clues:
“Mother at the lake.”
But whose mother, which lake?
“Baby Jean, 4 months old”—
and you realize if Baby Jean
is still alive she’d be very old.
Ephemera,
handled with such confidence,
believing someone will always know
what and who and where.
Inconceivable that someday
they will all be gone
and we will, too,
that even these subtle clues
are ephemera, meaningful
to a few and only for a time
before time and the people it holds
slip into the past
and are gone.
—PJ Thompson
May 16, 2022
