Places, Spaces, Traces Poem by Midifo Yearns

Never neutral, places hold life
in cast iron memory and look
with cynical smile or dead pan face
like plaster models in shop window case
staring, reading feelings, like tragic book
trigger old pain, cut with sharp knife.

On every part, in every piece
even dust or rust invite to pause
pain lodged in space as grace
that draws from worried face
a smile, a tender look, sad tear, cause
of joy, cherished moment of increase.

Where was it then and where to now?
What’s in this place that holds me so
and teases something deep within
moves and soothes beneath my skin
yet leaves me crying out to know
to touch, to clutch to soul, to hold, but how?