Remnants of a Former Life

Just as their surrounding schema exists
The option to walk these hallways persists.
Familiar faces move in such a way
It occurs that they should be made to stay –
What hubris, of course. What folly!
Our hold on this ball we volley
Is tenuous at best. It's doomed to drop –
Sooner or later it will be made to stop.
Years from now we will have ceased our duration
And been replaced by a new generation
Basking in its own presumed immortality
As we smile at such youthful mentality,
Remembering when we felt the same
And the world beckoned us to stake claim.
Faces will stare back in puzzlement, to be sure,
And not a one of these keys will open the door.
Novel ideas will have long since replaced
What we were certain could not be erased.
Hard as we may try to sustain
Not a trace of us will remain.
We will be excess cut by knife,
Mere remnants of a former life.

Author's Notes/Comments: 

This was written specifically as the centerpiece of a compilation of the same name, released December 29, 2012. I found I had a great deal of old poems which I still held affection for, but which would not find homes on new collections, as I had moved away from their sentiments – they were remnants of a former life, and thus no longer reflective of the writer, me. This concept gave rise to this poem, where I muse about the ephemeral nature of so much we flawed humans take for granted. 

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