Apprehension

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A boy stuffs newspapers

into a bag on a front porch.

Remember this moment forever,

the boy challenges himself,

not for the quality of that moment,

but for the possibility of apprehending

the trajectory of his life

then. A half century later

only the collage remains,

stitched images with edges and seams –

his mother, long dead, hair in curlers,

nibbling an egg salad sandwich

on the dark side of a screen door;

a dog, long dead, napping

beneath the shade of an oak;

a robin pecking for worms.

A time capsule with no

message to apprehend,

a bottle tossed back

to the relentless tide

as one

moment dissolves into

another moment

and nothing is

apprehended

then

or

now.

Bio:

Robert Nordstrom is a poet and free-lance writer living in Mukwonago, Wisconsin. He has published poetry in various literary magazines, including the Peninsula Pulse and more recently Verse Wisconsin.