Wherever we have been a while we leave
a shell that shows the limits of our stay
and those who know us well and see us weave
cocoons of comfort only see us gay.

By chance some later time we will have left
our former housing seeking greater growth,
and those who knew us then are now bereft
of understanding past and future both.

By misadventure promise dies or fades
and shrinking spirit fears expanding space
and those who cannot know us see our shades
of crumbling grey, our non-eternal trace.

Come poets, speak your incantations loud,
but not in hope but play address old shroud.

- Robert Stone, 10 October 2010