The dead do not live
as long as they used to.
Our memories have become
substandard housing for the dead.
We forget our beloved ancestors,
lose the scent of their songs,
tear down their barns,
pave their fallow fields,
cap their wells,
improve our inheritance into oblivion.
The old makes way for the new, and
soon we make rubble of the old new,
for nothing is ever never new enough.
As my grandfather used to say . . .
Never mind.
That was years ago.