The Museum of Half Remembered Things

Tomorrow I will try to recall
the names, the tired streets
that guided us, the faces now
featureless who shared the air
that has always been shared,
despite the half-grin smog of
the sky, gathering at horizons.
But today I have forgotten
and stand with strangers
on a rooftop pavilion. And we
are lively, smile at ourselves
for being so clever to be here,
at this time, when thousands
of years of progress benefit us.
We celebrate what has already
passed. We count time wryly,
who taught us seconds, to
see beyond today, to treasure
history and his counterpart,
obscurity. The new air chokes
the lying future who we are
ancestral to, as if each display
were the remains of an omen.
How to live folded when
we know we unravel? How
to recall a dream we never
walked? We gather here,
the remembers, to discover
change, her many names.