THE BIG QUESTIONS, 21: A SUN-DRENCHED ELSEWHERE (WHERE WILL I GO WHEN I AM OLD AND GRAY?)

This is Poem #21 in my series of poem-responses to the Big Questions. Where Will I Go When I Am Old and Gray? Where Would I Find the Leftovers of Life? (To help celebrate National Poetry Month, NaPoMo, April 2013.)

A SUN-DRENCHED ELSWHERE

"Now more than ever do I realize that I will never be content with a sedentary life, that I will always be haunted by thoughts of a sun-drenched elsewhere."---Isabelle Eberhardt

 

Sometime soon, I must swing down

from my sundown hammock,
get back to those unpasted pictures.

Albums have more life here than I need.

They can be nagging, flogging,
their bursting sunshine smiles nailing

time and love in sun-drenched elsewhere:

there, a place for lost seashells,
here, a cliff to dive into lost memories from.

Where have they all gone? Or faded into?

These walls are blank now,
where they hung mute on nailed frames.

Where shall I go from here when shadows

would no longer grow tall?
Will I even be able to talk to mottled walls?

I must go back somehow to a sun-drenched

refuge, wherever elsewhere
they have frozen into these dead pictures,

carrion of wonder in yellowed album pages.

Where have they gone, what place
awaits to return the days I have yet to shape?

I must find that one sun-drenched place

that haunts me now and see you
there before I abscond into those shadows.

---ALBERT B. CASUGA