Old calendars are where the past goes when it dies,
where days are laid to rest – each in its small rectangular plot,
space by space, row by row, in some month’s cemetery.
In each, numerals – like tiny headstones – identify the
day that was, and that now lives only in memory’s afterlife.
And we, if we visit these graves at all, may see the notes
scrawled there – clean house, dentist 4pm, call Sara –
small tributes to the accomplishments of the days that
served us well, but which, like the friends they were,
passed long before we were ready to see them go.
Richard West was Regents’ Professor of Classics in a large public university and has published numerous books, as well as many articles and poems, under his own name or various pen names. He now lives with his wife Anna in the American Desert Southwest, where he enjoys cooking and attempting to add flavor to his poems.
