Hello and welcome to Cook and Crank, the Cosmic Poetry Podcast. I'm your host, Simon Pole, the Cosmic Poet. The past recedes, the present paves it over like asphalt, but the mist remembers. That is the title of today's poem and is about quote unquote gentrification. But really it's about how the order, the organization of the past, and all that gave us in terms of human striving and creation is relentlessly and remorselessly entombed by the present. It can never come again or be reclaimed. It can, however, live on in spirit in us, and this is what we will do after the break. The logs, the mines, the mobs of hands, the shanties where they lived and brawled, all this decamped for other lands, but on this night the mist recalled. Condo, condo, and leap boutique, a diner ware the cheaper fare, would cost all wages for a week of one such worker, one whose care is for a feast to feed the day, when work he must, and whiskey waits, to loose the cramps and tongues which say, What better man above me rates? A turbojet now makes the trip, a morning from the farthest shore, Which took the trim sail tight ship, a week, a month or measures more, if wrecks there be or be calmed nights, when slacks the wind, where glassy waves reflect on high the starry sights, and prayer alone the sea lost saves. They count it light, they count it cheap, who built upon those lifetimes fled, and on their bones they dreamless sleep, what lies forgot beneath the bed. But I dream on when hangs the mist down lampless streets without a soul, as if the past has my cheek kissed, and in their graves the spirits roll. I'm your cosmic poet and host Simon Pole. Visit the website SimonPole.ca for more cosmic poetry, including the book we've just read from. We'll be back soon on the Cook and Crank Podcast with more readings from the Poems for Ocean collection. Until then, remember, poetry is the water of life, though whiskey might be too. Goodbye.