Nostalgia

Poem by Adam Crawford

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Nostalgia's really only had
about two centuries to carry weight.
That's a tiny timeframe when compared to
every other emotion that mankind
has experienced. Before then, it
only emerged through personal
 
Oddities of memory: this
blue barn, that old fence, some years-dead horse
with a white spot over one eye; the world
at large never changed though: always fields and
pie-fruit trees and quaint villages where
news meant anecdotes shouted o'er

Clay-tile rooftops far and away;
with no grandfathers to reminisce
about when such things were built from
hay and twigs. The first generation to
really have their whole lives displaced by
modernity's long-overdue stirrings --
 
The first to see cast-iron plows
be put out to pasture or hold a
blanket so immaculately-seamed that
all signs of human undertaking were
nearly invisible -- how could they
explain the impending sense of
 
Loss: powerful and unable
to be shared or understood in a
sufficient way until more time had passed
than they had left to live? Must they have then
carried this feeling silently and
alone to the end of their days?

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Adam Crawford is a writer of poems and short stories. His work has been published by InkBabies Lit Mag, Silent Sparks Press, and the Pomegranate London. He lives in Simi Valley, California.

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