High Noon

High Noon 5/16/2012

There are memories
And there are places
Randomly selected
For just one moment of time.

I don’t live there any more
And nothing will ever be the same
Shaking the dust off my heels
And leaving all the ghosts behind.

The sights, sounds, and smells
Are still there
Filed away in the secret places
Coming back at the strangest times
Unrequested and meaningless.

I cruised Wyatt Earp boulevard
And turned around at Boot Hill
Closing the circuit and back again
The one I knew so well.

Names and faces change
And people fade in and out
Familiar friends and acquaintanences
Here for a moment
And then gone forever.

Sharing a place and a time
In the most unlikely combinations
Across the vast distances of space
In a twist of the odds
A thousand billion to one.

We go on our way
And live our own lives
With only the thinnest of connections
In a sea of anonymous pedestrians.

Marriages fall apart
And heartfelt promises forgotten
As we fall victim to reality
And the disappointment of routines.

There are births
And there are joys
But also tragedy
And horror.

As the good are cut off
And evil men prosper
Without any consequence
Or twinge of conscience.

It is almost noon in Dodge
Where I grew up
Long ago and far away
About as far as I can get
From the here and now.

The shadows will pass over
The old house
Sold, subdivided
And crumbling to the ground.

Like so many others
Aging on the prairie
Once full of promise
And now abandoned to time.

I walked up the alley
And found the secret passage
And stood there for a moment
In peaceful reverie.

Today it must remain
But I cannot know for sure
A surreal memory
Of perfect solitude.

It is almost noon
And the sun is high
Time to walk the street
At the cross roads of fate
Staring dead level ahead
And taking everything back.