I’ve been to the shop
to watch it
being made
unchanging and unchanged.
Sorcerers in snow
white helmets,
reading my childhood
and all the places
I have been
with wooden spoons
carved
from Longview timber
seasoned in regression’s oil,
added limpids to the mix.
See through taffy in the candy kettle.
I once gazed
into the window
at everything
I was too young to buy
then spied a nickel
in the rubble of the gutter.
Found a way to dig it out
and went in.
The gutter went in with me.
Sunlight has a way of hiding things
That glitter in the darkness.
Sugar’s haze
obscures so many
arrow signs
but you can
taste it with each breath,
and some is not enough.
How much to eat
Rises with the tides of time
And falls with its forgetting.
Without another penny
there must be some other way
to backtrack
to the longing sated
and find the peanut in the middle.
*ljm