Warehouse of Dreams – Lee Hudspeth

Warehouse of Dreams - Lee Hudspeth

The grocery warehouse smells of sundries
Cardboard and tobacco
Rising
Rising
Rising
On pallets and shelves
Waiting for deliverance, just as we were

Idle chatter floats above the machinery’s din
Elders pontificating
Youngsters skeptical, yawning behind hands
The cigarette-tax stamping machine cl-cl-clanks along, mindlessly devouring an endless supply of cartons
We were innocent, at the time

Streets aplenty, in this small rural town
Some are paved, some are dirt
Winding their way to unkempt graveyards
Right up to the very edge of unimaginable mortality
Colliding with a golden, carefree, insect-buzzing summer day

Abandoned homes collapsing
Down into the weeds and scrub
Anxious to win
No condominiums here

Small creeks full of fishing holes
Passageways to yesterday
Smells and old photographs beckon me back
Summer after ever-shortening summer

Previously published in my poetry book Incandescent Visions

Lee Hudspeth is a poet living in Southern California. He believes that poetry is an attempt to describe the ineffable. Whereby a poet hopes to lasso all manner of inscrutable experiences: a crescent moon at twilight; the emotional landscape of the moment when you watch your children drive off after a holiday visit; the sound of the wind… Lee writes poems in an effort to make some sense of the world. He self-published his debut, full-length poetry book Incandescent Visions in 2019. His poetry has appeared in The Heron’s Nest, Cold Moon Journal, Poetry Pea Journal, Akitsu Quarterly, Presence, Fireflies’ Light, Stardust Haiku, Anti-Heroin Chic, and Star*Line, among others. He is currently working on a second poetry book. You can find him on Twitter @LeeHuds and his website https://LeeHudspeth.com.