You can hear it
coming down the road:
the stick of old age.
No Yeats. No rage.
Insistent, pervasive,
it permeates the brain
like acid.
Like an insistent stain.
Inside the carapace
it works its insidious way
into the very heart of existence.
There to stay.
Silent inside the darkness
hidden from all evidence,
it finds its way alone
into the very marrow, through the bone.
The tap, tap, tap of time
beating its threatening percussions
on the brain.
Insistent. Like pain.
Not a hint of wind.
From leaves, not the slightest stir.
The sky clear.
But, very near,
that tap, tap, tapping
towards the light
comes time,
comes anxiety, comes fright:
persistent,
inevitable,
the hammer of existence, the sword of now,
the utter meaningless of why and how,
beating relentlessly
on the stubborn anvil of all that was,
that tide from a remote sea
of all that is, and all that is to be.
