Scrapbook from the 1930’s

This album honors lives now grayed and gone,
its pages of once-passionate regard
like silenced bells rusted in carillon
 
which resonate to speculations drawn:
She looks so grim; those times must have been hard -
the scrapbooked lives of forebears grayed and gone.
 
In fast-paced now, it might provoke a yawn,
this ramble down a defunct boulevard
to virtual bells rusted in carillon,
 
but photo albums house a pantheon
of those who in our history have starred -
monuments to lives now grayed and gone.
 
Some ancestors were pride and paragon.
The legacies of others leave us marred-
cracked bells residing in the carillon!
 
This relic is to browse, then place upon
some higher shelf, but never to discard -
this scrapbook filled with ghosts of grayed and gone,
like silenced bells rusted in carillon.

---

Lark Beltran

Lark Beltran, originally from California, has lived in Lima, Peru for many years as an ESL teacher.  Many of Lark´s poems have appeared in online and offline journals, including Penwood Review, Bolts of Silk, Miller’s Pond, Strange Horizons and Adirondack Review.