Those the Bus Did Not Carry

Beyond the thousand forgetting hours

we now come to a halt, downcast

without excuses or evasions

without the ability to shift

blame to ones departed

And the departed are not to blame

they, the shifting sands whose

abilities we have long been without

whose evasions no longer excuse us

We, with downcast eyes, halted

for hours of forgetting, a

thousand things we lack aching

in our flesh like shrapnel wounds

And wounds, self-made from the shrapnel

of the bombs we've built, our flesh

an aching carapace of lack, a

thousand times as fragile as forgetting

halted hours and eyes hard upon

false excuses held too long  

Evasions patently false, sands

shifted beneath our feet, blame

stuck upon our shirts like the false names

of the departed

By Patrick M. Tracy

5/15/17