DWINDLE

Things dwindle.
Ownership slips from my fingers,
mortgages, car titles, men I have loved.
The green plaid two-piece I wore in college,
the pink linen that marked a sixth-grade Easter.
Towns become houses, houses turn into rooms.
Rooms diminish until they occupy two boxes.
And still we cannot quite define
what it is that is our life.
Habits shift, eyesight weakens.
Old ladies struggling up bus steps
seem less remote.
The tent revivals which had such power
in youth are rendered absurd.
Memory proves inconsequential.