TRANSIENT

The spirits that live with us are dying. Each summer
we spend away from them, their voices grow dimmer.
Trampled here beneath these mile-high pylons of bone
is the smell of the first season, is your hair growing long,
is the time you first caught scent of your own body
and thought, “I've been smelling that all my life!”

Someone just shoved past me who could be an old lover
or a dead ancestor, but what does it matter?
Faces become emblems of themselves.We are shuttled from tunnel to tunnel, through miles
of massed blackness, our heads bobbing like long rows
of candles on an altar, waiting to be blown out.

The light comes on again. “Exit.” We jostle and push
toward our next hurried birth.