White Angel Crow

Only when anyone can
Be a successful prophet
Predicting things in advance

Can any prophecy be
An anticipated thing.
Prediction is the strange game

We make from our memories.
Then we wait. When memories,
Freshly minted memories,

Agree with what's remembered
To have been a prediction
We celebrate and collect

Our fees, whether we go by
The label of scientist,
Gypsy, or Nostradamus,

Whether we cheered for our team,
Horse, war, or politician
With fellow bar flies or words.

The discrepancy between
The past in the brain, the past
All around lets us define

That difference as subtraction,
The long gone and can't come back
Presences in our thinking

Serving us as nostalgia
For our irreparable loss,
The ruins of sensation

Reminding us to be sad.
But most of what we're mourning
Never was except as loss

And the swift white angel crow
For what we must know to miss
Misses us missing again.