Meditating on the Ephemera

We have a stack or ream,
if you will, of old magazine pages,
advertisements for creatures
of a by-gone era.

Does anyone care about
these decorations of yesterday?
Perhaps the humming of wax
wings can still be heard,
ancient murmur of false memory.

An artist illustrates a moment
that never happened. Lies can lead
to the truth. Or can they?

I worry that storing up such
useless items will lead to a worship
of ephemera, a contemplation
of what has passed on.

The tattered comics of my father’s
youth, vintage photographs of folks
I’ve never seen before, love letters
written on a forgotten occasion.

Perhaps one day I’ll move on, but
risk losing much in this decision
to include the final punctuation mark.