Beyond The Present by Dave Jaffe

                    Beyond The Present by Dave Jaffe




      Time can't be gathered in your hands
       It moves like the crow's flight
       A falling black shriek
        In a grey autumn sky
       Or it floats in a calm blue sea
        Of waving memories.


        In city streets
        Giant bulldozers noisily
        Crush memories into dust.
        While giant blue grey condos
        Slowly rise from the underground
        And throw shadows
        On the human dots below.



        Old people like me
        Are wafted into the past by poetry or music
        Or look at old landscapes.
        There I dwell in lands
         Empty of backfiring cars
         The electric whine of the carpenter's saw
          And the brute noise of the jackhammer.
         My world is
         Small and beautiful,
          Like the aspens standing in white quiet coloumns,
          In a photo I took long ago
          Outside of a town whose name I have forgotten.