Buried beneath

Furrows of insulation,

&

Heaps of disintegrated photographs,

Are

Cards for many occasions.

Snakes resembling many moccasins. 

Cards  decorated with colorful balloons

&

Cakes

Even playing cards,

Faded  by time,

Not by the sand in the hourglass.

These cards,

Originally intended to be remembered, having escaped their boxed fate,

&

Landed face down.

Cards  depicting empty forests and singing swallows,

Lending their ears

&

Eyes

To to a simpler time.

The faint  smell of tree sap

&

The stickiness of maple syrup, flowing like landslides over pancake islands,

Never enough napkins to contain the motivated molasses.

Only the forks can save them now.

All of these  individual premonitions,

Of  the few cards that landed face down,

Admonished all at once

When they were covered with a storage bin full to bursting.

A bin filled with even more things,

Even some other  cards,

Honoring other occasions

But mostly

Crafts

&

Bills,

Mostly.

The  essential summation of this and so many other attics.

Which is in its base form is flat, mostly unexplored land

Consisting mostly of termites

&

Crashed spaceships,

& pictures of windmills.

& pictures of windmills.

Little plots of land above the rigid cinder-blocks

&

Visceral,

Vertical beams that breathe inside the  sanctity of the walls.

Ribs encasing the beating heart of the standing house.

 Colonies of silverfish

&

Ghosts

Both

Survive and maintain

This  bustling canopy.

These empty farms.

 Scarcely lit terra firma rich with textiles and

Rare smiles,

Bursting at the seams

With stuff that might be from inside a couch cushion

Or

Cotton candy.

Cornucopias of wrapping paper and

Phone-books.

Wade like schools of feeding fish,

Just below the surface,

Bouncing like ping-pong balls between ceiling joints,

Out of reach until at least next season.

 Time practically stands still up in the attic,

Until

 A certain stairway is unveiled,

Flooding the ample crevice with  more

Creaking footsteps

&

The ringing of doorbells,

An uproar from the legions of fans below,

Men and women,

Lifeboats and hard candy,

Waving handkerchiefs and breaking bottles in adoration,

 At this time,

Only this time,

Celebrating civility and stability in  unison.

And weeping when the door closes,

And weeping when the pictures stop.

Matted stuffed animals posturing to become relevant again,

Toys with missing pieces exists only as foliage at this juncture,

The silverfish,

&

A  select few other species,

(Ghosts included)

Find themselves

With nothing left to do but

Read  many ancient  brochures;

With glasses  slid down to the tips of their noses,

Like inquiring grandparents, struggling to see in the dark.

While wondering what the  unopened harmonicas that are curiously  buried

Deeper than any of these other treasures,

In cardboard boxes that suspiciously  resemble coffins

Could possibly sound like.

This  precarious collective consists of neither

Flora nor fauna,

(With the exception of the silverfish)

They only chew up what is left,

Of what is left.

Obliterating all traces of sugar

&

Starch.

Recessing confessions and an incalculable number of invitations,

Filing them into oblivion .

All the contents of the attic,

All the love letters,

&

Fireworks packed away for nights teeming with expectation;

Those

Nights never saw those lights,

Those

Nights never read those words,

But still they relished in the explosive manner of how  the people celebrated.

While

Dreaming of dancing weather-vanes,

&

Falling leaves

That pirouette   just out of  arms reach,

Spiraling just beyond  hindsight,

In plain sight.

Slot machines

&

Game  cartridges slated for personal use,

Once bright with

Color and sound,

Are chipped and covered with a thick coat of dust,

As opposed as to a

Coat of arms.

The machines fighting battles they never imagined,

[Saloons doors all closed now, as the town looks on with squinted eyes]

Staring at  a card from the

“Thinking of you” section of the grocery store;

Equipped with faded roses on the front

Equipped with faded eyes, ready to bury so many opponents after this one.

Even from a distance.

[Pistols still holstered]

Thorns readily exposed.

And now a whistling can be heard…