Centurion

Age creeps up upon us all like a small gray cat,

Stealthy in approach, with softly padded footfalls,

Sensually, movements vague, yet with determined

Vengefulness, sinuously stalking each man and woman,

Mewling, purring, mercilessly pursuing, eventually

Climbing uninvited and demanding upon each lap.

That dark centurion of time, keeper of infinity,

Guardian of predestined oblivion and destruction

Visits in the darkest hours of the utter catlike night,

Marking all without concern for beauty or strength.

Unknowable, implacable finity gathering its black shroud

Of ultimate, inescapable, darkest, wearying exhaustion.

Once young, once strong, once pulsating with energy

The high are brought low, the lowly elevated to heights

Known only to some higher purpose that transcends

Our understanding; in the final accounting, nothingness.

The lonely anguish of age mercifully dulled by fading reason,

Senilia of ineluctable dissolution and ultimate decay.

That little gray cat is on my lap as I speak, purring

Its obscene pleasures as it kneads my leg, small, fatal,

Herald of impending doom, whisking its tail to give the lie

To its irresistible deceits, deceptions of bleakest promise.

Small gray icon of doom, it yawns as if nothing matters.
Poised upon the brink of the centurion’s fateful whim.