Listening To 'Knoxville 1915' Poem by Morgan Michaels

'I can't leave the past behind
tho' I tried and tried and tried and tried and tried
for the past was a pretty good ride
that I cannot put out of my mind.

I can't get it out of my mind,
the multiplex, compound past
beckoning, holding fast
like a sun to the stumbling blind.

Like a sun to a stumbling blind
or Orpheus, nervously
looking back for his lost Eurydice-
I cannot but look behind.

I cannot but look behind,
lest it fade and, fading away,
vanish, like the day
when, cheerful and kind,

I found you,
and for the first time everything made sense-
we walked in a cloud of innocence
till you were gone, long, long ago,

So long ago it all was,
but it feels like yesterday, the time-
closer and more sublime
than the present moment does.

Sometimes, in my dreams
a curtain parts: on a screen
I see the whathasoncebeen
nearer than ever, and it seems

To breathe and color itself, again-
the gorgeous past, and declare
'I can break your heart- beware!
with just an effortless refrain'.

And reaching out my hand, I say,
Stay! I'm scared of the what'stocome.
'But I must be gone to where I'm coming from',
the Past says and, with the morning, slips away.