I am historian, rememberer,
storyteller.
I read the last chapters of the book of myself
but have to review earlier chapters
for younger, slower readers.
What did it look like before?
Where did they put...?
Who lived over by the creek?
What was it like when...?
Plenty of questions to assure me of my worth
as a source on life lived.
For yesterday's flowers are still
there on the wind for me.
I hear voices long since silenced.
I carry snap shots of this town,
each a bit of calendar art
to mark the passage of time.
They blend together and become a movie
with a cast of thousands
of actors.
This rememberer has the right to retroactively
recast any character to
meet a new plot line.
Who would know of such fraud?
But, alas, there are so few who are reading
ahead of me.
So I spend more time on
reviews of previous chapters than
enjoying what is new.
The wrinkled brain behind this wrinkled face
also knows how conveniently to forget.
So, I have not told the readers
how my story ends.
Those glimps of the last pages
are just for me.
Soon they too will be historian, rememberer,
storyteller free to peek ahead.
And then the young will think
of them as part of the past.