The dead

are like dinners we ate

before,

and recall

in our faint memories

of Sunday afternoons

at the Yacht Club;

those crabs;

that white wine

Old friends long passed

are like old meals remembered,

and just as gone

It's useless to mourn them

Mourning is just a bad habit,

and life is a slap in the face

Turning the pages

of my old diaries,

a rancid stench

of molded teens

blow up in my face

I watch the doings

of the long dead,

going about their chores;

our mothers and fathers

doing what was expected

and at times what was not,

but always with that same sense

of the natural,

the common;

nonetheless, since decades,

in closed circuits,

loops of repetition,

like tunes on repeat in your head

when you hike alone through the valleys

of The King's Trail

in your own persuasive aliveness;

the mothers and fathers

ash

and choice recollections;

doing their deeds forever;

the limited forever

of your memories

in traditional up-keeps

forever locked

in their dead-locked dead ends;

imprints

in moldy printed matter

in a water-damaged basement

below the cobble stone street level

of the poor side of town

Now is a transitory comrade

and an eternal companion