If I Must Look Behind

Brilliant day with spots
between gusts
Moments when the present
cannot move out of shadow
When the mirror cannot turn
to the outside
When there's nothing to see or feel
only a scent of fractured memory
Of choices made on the wind
in reckless roiling—

Some seeds find earth,
Some lodge in unreachable perches,
Some occupy birds
But not a one comes back to the spot where
It can all be reconstructed,
Regret created,
An alternative end
surmised.

Yet one can't slip a tarp over it
to hide it now
Nor expose it to light
once flung to the shadows.
It exists, fixed but unstable,
the flux pushing it
Like a gale pushes a window,
Like a past life swallows your breath
but cannot speak.