Inwood Today
before that restaurant opened
there was another restaurant
in the same spot
a different name
same type of food
but less expensive
that shop selling shoes
used to sell books
and that convenience store
was once a service station
when the town supported two
There is no tree
that is just a tree
or a house
just a house
if you look
you will find the perfume of past lives
in every reincarnated
building
every lawn
On that bathroom door
Down in Plymouth
Lois came home
to find her husband hanging
and the baby crying
alone in the crib
You may live there now
and never hear that story
Gerald sat drinking some java
in his favorite diner
but when the cops came in for coffee
he panicked and slipped a dime bag worth of joints
between the cushions of the seat
so if the cops stopped him
he’d be clean
and when he came back the next day
the joints were gone
the diner is also gone
and it is now an empty field
with the weeds growing higher
That song
once played as an LP on a turntable
and then on tape
then CD
and now downloaded to a MacBook Air
it has been danced to/sung along with/appreciated over a Chardonnay
Steve and Natalie had it sung at their wedding
and it played in the background
when Bill spent the night with Lorraine
for the last time
before they both moved away
in different directions
their own trail of tears
I don’t believe he’s spoken to her at all
in the last 20 years
Does each generation
see different possibilities
in the spaces they transverse?
in the structures they colonize?
And is it only old men who remember
when cigarettes cost 40 cents a pack
and everyone smoked.
