Time Lapse (&Quot;Grey Gardens&Quot;) Poem by John Taggart

Whether you can tell from this distance what
the house was before it was
consumed by wildness, by rampant

greenery is only partly the point. Its grand dreams have aged,
the ravage, evident to the eye.
Devoured by whispers what remains
remains grey-shingled & silver shadowed.

Green leaves whisper ruin, vines whisper ruin; boughs whisper ruin…
Whispers of things not allowed. Of things someone
thought was said.

The present's the movie of the past, a dialogue of disembodied voices,
each talking to the other, over the other, a polyphonic contestation of desire
undiminished by time.
The rooms the lonely rooms echo with them.

The ocean—a thin ribbon of blue—contends in its own element
with a never-ending susurration.
From the outside, you can barely see the faces through the window screens.
From the interior—the dim, decrepit interior—the long windows are full of leaves & light.