Come With Me
Come with me to where the Milk House Ford
Is paved with cobbles, now so long ignored,
But once the wagons crossed and climbed a grade
To Seventh Street, a country road in shade
Blue-white milk that rocked inside the cans
Carried up to where a Safeway stands,
But then a store with yellow wheels of cheese,
Cracker barrels, apples, bins of peas
No so long ago, a hundred years
A little more, another hundred nears
When we will be forgotten as were they:
A century is counted day by day
Those who drove the wagons, dipped the milk
Have faded like a water mark on silk,
And those who stopped to watch the wagons cross
Are long forgotten, like the wagons lost
As shadows are forgotten as they slide
Along the ground although they never died,
So images of those who lived I see
Not faded, living, standing next to me
There’s the wagon rattling, and the reins
Held loosely in the hand, the sound remains,
The shallows of the creek, the cobbles wet,
The images of old, I see them yet
Pavel
September 11, 2011