Nostalgia

The steady click of sprocketed film

racing from reel to reel in a maze of loops

and clips and doors provided the soundtrack

for these tiny pictures projected onto a screen

in rapid succession, duplicating the motion

captured by an old movie camera, an 8mm,

ancient today, an artifact from a distant past.

The pictures, once colored, have since bleached

to shades of gray and white, washed out,

or interrupted by a splash of yellow, orange,

bright white, light leaked onto this aged film.

My parents had bought the camera, sleek and new,

to capture our childhood, then locked it away in a box

we found in the attic long after they were gone,

and our childhood even longer gone, so far back

as to be forgotten, these faded images of strangers

cavorting on a beach, running and splashing, parties 

with candled cakes and ice cream, kids, hand in hand,

exploring the trails of an amusement park gone, too,

the animals freed and the cages, rides, and ticket booths

dismantled, gone to rust and rot, overgrown,

merely memories to be recalled, memories

replayed on faded movies, the soundtrack

but the steady click of sprocketed film,

racing like the years going forward, into the past,

a soundtrack of the life we had shared and forgotten

in growing up, becoming our parents and theirs,

reminded again of what we had, what we’d lost,

and what sustained us in the passing years,

recaptured here racing reel to reel,

setting us free now in the tears we shed,

watching and wondering where it all had gone.