THE SUNDIAL

If you should think me lucky, for I’ve yet to depart the days of youth

if you should find me beautiful, with my eyes bright and my lips full and smooth

if you should find my mind refreshing as a good book and my peace soothing as the ocean

know that

my passage is concealed

the sun shines yet on your time,

scorching the dial moving its way to the other side until it is lost in the fire

The empty classroom shuddered still,

When they made their final exit onto the street,

Amidst the muttering noises

The archaic and meaningless voices

Fixed eyes anticipating the fall

Of their menacing and stubborn will;

They walked onto the street

Where bashful light hid some corner there and here,

And embraced the fear.

Through what would it sustain,

This thing they find empowering,

On contemptuous paths they’ll crawl

In countless heated seas they’ll boil

But luscious paths and passionate waters,

They claim,

On the way to love visceral and irreversible.

How could they be more certain?

Oh… Wrinkles and pain,

Love’s queer, vain toil,

Children?

Or what duties life detains?

This thing,

Clumsy shame veiled by unflappable strength,

Crucifies their lives, brands their disgraceful breasts!

Yet they never wonder,

Nor do they seem to care

When youth passes before the judgment of time

What would then remain?

A tired sigh, a forlorn hope perhaps,

That minutes could start sixty seconds earlier

Or days could reverse their order,

Contemplating all the while, praying for the power

To conquer what their status can't reconcile…

What remains,

When his hair, all silver gray,

Reflects her youthful beauty and her mournful gaze?

When he can no longer tell her of written wonders

And read her fledgling short stories,

When she turns aloof to his stories,

And her secret pleasures inflame his greatest worries,

What does she retain

When he teaches, not with words and verses,

But through the webs on his aged face

Shows her the hell where she’s headed

Days in a lifetime of pain and a life spent in days of loneliness

Then with what could she nurture his faith

In love, when none of it remains

And what would they have gained,

These bohemian unbelievers,

From their swagger across the schoolyard,

Cautious rendezvous in late night coffee shops

Secret glances, creative renderings, risks and chances

And intellectual lovemaking

What would all of this have meant

When he grows old

"With the bottom of his trousers rolled"

His pride defenseless and her passion cold

What would they have gained?

And what would then remain?

and in the end it shall consume me

Previous
Previous

BRANDED

Next
Next

WHAT IF