Old Man
You haunt the gift shops
like something unattainable in the back room,
an invisible musk, snuffling
behind the faux fur and aged wood facade.
You guard the streets
formed in driftwood and desecrated trunks.
We see you in the formless lumps of black wood in the brush
and hear you in the faint snapping crash of frightened deer.
Alarm! An apparition on a dumpster lid,
a shadow on a thin tent wall;
a velvet footfall that leaves no track.
Old man, we wall you in with cement and steel
and drive you to the hills in a flood of houses.
Diminished remain, you haunt us.
