We Mythologize The Past... Poem by John Tansey

We Mythologize the Past

We mythologize the past:
Fables spun from the onset of age
At its shrinking sphere of influence
And the changing, landscape since our youth;
The last time we looked or cared to.

Out of a longing, a nostalgia
To construe fact from failing memories,
And in the absence of any eyewitnesses;
Or sworn-in testimonies to the contrary.

I misconstrue and re-write my history as fiction;
Alter the facts of names, dates, places.
Romanticize the events,
Make mythic the mundane.

To tell a better story to our grandchildren.
After all, who can prove that it did not happen

In exactly the way that I choose to remember…


John Tansey 9.9.7