Auld Lang Syne

“These fragments have I shored against my ruins…”
The Waste Land, T. S. Eliot

The photos show me I was there,
and that we laughed and clapped
our mittened hands to scare away
the frost. That toasting mapped

frontiers of not yet years, dispelled
old tracks in rutted folds
of long time since. Stored tidily
in stacks of foggy cold,

the prints seep color, flatten hope
and definition. Could
that curled edge hide a fistful of
green mold, already spread

across compressed, stained fingers, spores
devouring solid stone
or recognition? Cover dust
and ashes with illusion?

December 31, 2017
Bangor, Maine

Diane G. Martin, disabled poet, photographer, prose writer, Russian literature specialist, translator, Willamette University graduate, is writing a novel about the Siege of Leningrad. In Russia since the Pandemic began, she is a longtime resident of Nevada, Oregon, San Francisco, CA, Maine, St. Petersburg, Russia, Italy. She has one daughter.