Pondering Time

Time is a weary soldier marching endlessly down a spiraling dusty road
A lonely ghost, a phantom train sputtering sorrowfully
Beneath the burden of its load.

Time is the impatient child unable to stand a minute’s wait;
The dry, creaking shell of a man hobbling through virility’s long cool ashes
The snowflake falling certainly to its death—
The storm cloud looming on the wind’s icy breath.

Time is the faceless conductor blandly moaning, “Tickets, please,”
The instant of euphoria at the gateway of pain,
The rabbit’s final gasp in the constrictor’s cold squeeze,
The gray, soapy water’s last surrender to the drain.

Time is the ragged wanderer begging for change,
The one your children always talk to against your wishes;
Do they sense what you miss, or are they drawn to something strange
The way the shining lure ensnares the gullible fishes?

Time is the unraveling threads of a worn-out prayer shawl,
The rosary beads spilling off their broken strand;
It’s an unfinished right of passage—
Its meaning, like those broken beads slipping from your hand.

Time is the swiftly running stream
Grinding and polishing lonely rocks along its banks
It’s the bent back of the aging priest
Succoring the poor without need or hope of thanks;
The relentless, hungry waves eating land from the island’s shore—
Time is all these things, all these things and more…

--Hank Eder May, 2004