What We Take With Us

who knew what

we would remember

from the college years

the prankster years

the full-of-ourselves-

over-the-top years

when we were young

enough to imagine how

we knew it all but in small

uneven increments of awareness

discovered our minds were full

of next to nothing of understanding

anything yet consequential

who could have predicted

what we might uncover

in our stumbling metaphysical

mumbling what we would

first see that we could never unsee

even with the lavish benefit

of our heavy textbooks

the boorish lectures

the exorbitant rambling tuitions

and unsubstantiated theorems

who could have had

the foresight to spot

in our long hours

of intoxication and study

what would be our first

lasting lesson in the frailty

in the sheer unmitigated

depravity of human nature

breaking in one night

to the old collapsing  

sagging time-lapsing

abandoned manor house

down the rutted unpaved road

from our rural liberal arts college

pushing in the rickety back door

to the rotting stinking structure

in the hope of finding a safe

hidden place to drink our beers

smoke our pot get wasted

make out beyond the gaze

of the gawking campus police

far from the flashlights

of the local white cops

what were we thinking

the dust the dirt the filth

the bat and rat shit

the wobbly creaking stairs

in the center hall without a rail

we had to climb each at our peril

to get to the bedroom level

finding a horrible garbage strewn room

the leafless branches of a petrified ficus

left in a dry clay pot in front

of the window with its broken panes

and missing glass pigeons startling

flying out mice scurrying back through

the seams in cracked and stained

plaster and lath walls the lead paint

chipping the fading graying wallpaper

everywhere peeling off in

the silhouettes of curling figurines

and in the darkest recess

of the fetid forgotten enclosure

behind the rain-soaked

mattress at the center

of a collapsed maple frame

to our horror a locked cage

with a pile of brittle

meatless bones curled as if

sleeping in one corner

a mold covered clicked collar

clutching the vertebrae below

the intact jaw and skull  

a loop of metal near

the bottom of the worn oval

with a dime-store heart

engraved with the name

of the abandoned dog