Poem by Adam Crawford

Nostalgia's really only had
about two centuries to carry weight.
That's a tiny timeframe when compared to
every other emotion that mankind
has experienced. Before then, it
only emerged through personal
 
Oddities of memory: this
blue barn, that old fence, some years-dead horse
with a white spot over one eye; the world
at large never changed though: always fields and
pie-fruit trees and quaint villages where
news meant anecdotes shouted o'er

Clay-tile rooftops far and away;
with no grandfathers to reminisce
about when such things were built from
hay and twigs. The first generation to
really have their whole lives displaced by
modernity's long-overdue stirrings --
 
The first to see cast-iron plows
be put out to pasture or hold a
blanket so immaculately-seamed that
all signs of human undertaking were
nearly invisible -- how could they
explain the impending sense of
 
Loss: powerful and unable
to be shared or understood in a
sufficient way until more time had passed
than they had left to live? Must they have then
carried this feeling silently and
alone to the end of their days?

Adam Crawford is a writer of poems and short stories. His work has been published by InkBabies Lit Mag, Silent Sparks Press, and the Pomegranate London. He lives in Simi Valley, California.