Time Has a Bad Habit of Disappearing
Day by day, year by year
In celebration of my rapidly approaching 75th B-day; NO, Google, I DON’T need to “Fix” my listing by noting for all that I was born closer to the end of the American Civil War than to the “coming of middle age” of Tom Brady and Gissele’s kids.
If bad things happen to you when you’re young (and they surely will) and hurt you at that time and these bad things retain their power over the years so that when you’re much older they still hurt you, consider yourself very lucky or stupid (sorry, but come on...)
It appears to me that far more often the bad shit coming our way, as we get older. The unforeseen and unknowable future holds far greater opportunities for pain than we can imagine when we’re young, until it hits us.
I know this sounds a bit like an old guy telling younger people in a heartless reaction to their pain and/or heartbreak, “Oh that’s nothin’ jus’ you wait.” And it sounds like that because that’s pretty much what it is.
But only the unfolding of the years can show what I’m talking about.
Which, come to think of it, makes the writing and reading of this poem pretty much a waste of time.
Sorry: first for this poem but even more for what you’ve got coming your way as you wait in joyful idiocy for the coming of nothing and no one in particular.
Because what’s moving towards you, invisible and silent for now may make what has come before puny and forgettable in comparison.
She Can Wade In a Drop of Dew
Reflections
For K. & Her Little One
Your texting goads me out the door to you gliding neighborly,
lithe fingers bearing Dine-and-Dash, fixing addresser error.
Our meeting’s motion spouts in your gleaming smile’s lively ocean,
spry parcel’s passing cresting dress, whirling windless air to roar.
Mischievous mosey touts sinful glowing: wild like the posy,
past revel blooming, merging your twirling with lass fair, so scored,
Spinning sundress staring high
Swaying under Jerry’s cry
“Wading in a drop of dew”
Time rolls away — it’s true!
Time rolls away — so few!
Tied in the bright summer dye
Skyward, earthward arms to fly
Sun turns upward, dancer flew
Time rolls away — anew!
Time rolls away — so few!
Dress spread under starry sky
Smile greets heaven’s passerby
The girl fixed eternal new
Time burns away — the dew!
Time rolled away — from you!
Working starts anew, ending with your e-moting quietude,
requesting that landscaping stop for just one hour and no more.
Starting music class, chiming kids, wooden fluting, drumming bash,
defying score perfecting, but for one Hour above the roar.
Lyrics ring softly, muting in her golden strumming strongly,
the singing bard directing what becomes one’s Hours ever scored,
Seeing in those days gone by
Carefree singing my goodbye,
“I will never be so new!”
Time rolls away — so few!
Time rolls away — the dew!
Son smiles singing summer high
Swinging arms to soothe his cry,
“I am dancing just for you!”
Time rolls away — so few!
Time rolls away — my dew!
The child’s wonder widens eye
On dress spread, his mother’s sigh,
“Never here again with you!”
Time burns away — my dew!
Time stole the day — my dew!
Early morning dew, coating grass with a musing solitude,
drenching this landscaping and those toys spreading your lawn to door.
The morning bedewed knowing’s patches with visioning renewed,
mixing this day’s living and those joys vexing, forgone before.
The sun’s reflecting, morphing past with mothering perfecting,
urging this day making joys — evaporating evermore.
Two Truths About Time
A pair of comments you may not have considered before
I Decided that I’d simply Live forever, which would give me plenty of time to write poems. If I lived Forever, there’d be no end to the poems I’d be able to write. Somehow though, some small part of the plan seemed flawed. so I’m jotting down a few poems right now, just in case, you know?
If All Time Really Occurs Simultaneously Then: James Dean walks along the wet gutter up Broadway, while my fish tank hums, and a train goes and my mother, sober, says she loves me and bumps against a wall, drunk, and dying from cancer, on her deathbed, blinks her eyes, unable to lose that stare, the look of a small, wild creature trapped and finished.
Photo by Krists Luhaers on Unsplash & Liana Mikah on Unsplash
The Grateful Dead’s “Franklin’s Tower” from Blues for Allah, “Sugar Magnolia” from American Beauty, The Raven by Poe, and my actress neighbor inspired "She Can Wade In a Drop of Dew."
Copyright Vincent Triola & Terry Trueman
