_        _ What can be salvaged that remains buried?
You’re asking me?
A row of Appennine cypress hemming the driveway
is the only clue left in the dream remembered with any clarity.
After that, you find yourself walking toward a grainy dusk
you hadn’t anticipated nor felt the need to embrace.
But the street continues nonetheless and the tram wires prove it,
suspended like an abandoned cobweb
against a dank sky on the outskirts.
Once you get past the shop windows
there’s a noon whistle and the storage yard empties
and a blue tarp is thrown on the crowd.
A peeling billboard sits centered in a derelict field,
wordless and ghostly. The pylon nearby needs painting.