Taxomnesic Cognition Disorder

Back to the place which used to matter

nothing but the people has changed

only a handful few are left

to tend to vivid memories.

Some unease in me I cannot name.

The old grey yet older and there

its presence as telluric as the skerries.

Some who used to matter are now dead

but it's something else which bothers the peace.

Life was easier to handle back then,

it didn't have the nerve it has today.

It's hard to tell how much more

worn out the main square's cobblestones are

but they have to be, like most of us.

Suddenly what's amiss as I turn to leave –

they sawed off one of the ancient chestnuts

behind the campanile which forgot to ring.

I have to sit down on the steps to the common room

weak at the knees now I've come to realise.

The stump is hollow at the core

I understand it had been a necessary measure,

a huge gaping hole in a row of sailor teeth.

A power is waning out of memory

discarded with a half-done shrug

or a sideways nod of the head.

No warning could possibly have been issued

like this shot echoing starting the head skyward

pausing the hoe and the breath.

We might as well never have planted that tree

a hundred and fifty-four years ago.

“The growth isn't worth the end,

it was just waiting time, wasted effort,”

that's what some thought watching the crane operate.

Life goes on as it did when it stopped for me

eighteen years ago, unpickupable

for it was never dropped.