TIME PASSES

There are none now to believe me,
None to take it as more than a small joke,
But my mother could conjure into existence
New distant relatives who would rise,
Stretch themselves, blink a time or two,
And believe they'd been born as others are,
Had mothers and fathers, siblings, friends,
Had moved and breathed, had rejoiced and suffered
And, strange to say, all the world assented
To this impudent imposition,

Letting them conduct themselves
As if they’d legally slipped across the border
Into the real world.

                                  Eleven years ago she died
And I fear that all those she called here --
All those good, eccentric people --
Have begun to flicker and to vanish
To be again as if they never were.