THANK YOU TO EDITOR MARK ANTONY ROSSI FOR PUBLISHING MY POEM IN THE JANUARY ISSUE OF ARIEL CHART. 

https://www.arielchart.com/2024/01/afterimages.html

Afterimages

 

Only quiet, still visions,

emotional afterimages

of a once bustling historical form

known to have existed.

Evidence of old tradition is here,

but only one chapter can be viewed

of the book of its past,

all other chapters being conspicuously absent, 

abandonment’s factors not known.

 

 There can be only so many causes for its defeat,  

which begs the question -

over the course of time

what took it from its short endurance,

this once dynamic place, 

with citizens living in such a dynamic way,  

with the continual rise of activity evident in daily life,

and dropped it into its entropy,

then into the final stage of collapse

leaving only this eerie forlorn location,

a site filled with haunting mystery,

relinquished by any who survived

and went in search of better optics.