What Rhymes with Time

What Rhymes with Time

At the end, a fourth line reads: A Poet - Here lies.

In this place of death where the plots

Are laid out in grids and numbered by lots

Separating those souls of wealth with their majestic tombs

From the poor ones, whose only richness was life’s dire wounds.

And there too, resting in peace a wordsmith - forever buried by whys.

Walking along the outer and inner edges of quietness

One’s pace slows at each marker that reads that life

Was lived between begin and end; there was a son and a wife;

There was Confederate soldier killed in the Battle of Tupelo  

And, there was a woman who walked this earth 153 years ago;

Setting nearby, a baby born and died on the same day - in stillness.

The Junipers stand alone in twisted forms as if in mournful wailing

While the Sallows group together, down by the old pond, sadly weeping

Seemingly reaching down for the yellow evening primrose creeping

Along the water’s greenish surface where a knot of frogs hides

And then, a thought leads to a reason why one never chides

The dead nor wails at their passing due to life’s failing.

Instead wonder - What rhymes with time?

Then gather all the words very carefully;

Place them together impeccably.

Chose each line to build the account of one.

Form the stanza that will then stand - forever done

And that ends with: a poet lies here - with no more lines.

Time and Again

All the many voices swirl around the room

some conversations are audible

but mostly a bundle of talking blooms

There’s the high pitch of the giddy woman sitting at the bar's end

and there is the baritones of the burly man

expounding on about a contend

While the muted television monitors play

showing voiceless mouths speaking with scrolling words

making little sense ...

however, it’s fine – there is no need to relay

Liquor rules the moment and shades the mind

There’s an entertainer singing his song

playing his guitar

no one is really listening

it’s just another gig – he sees no wrong

There’s occasional and scattered clapping -  

the sentiment seems more a courtesy

of guilty pleasures snapping

Beer flows from the taps and over the glass and lips - glistening

The man in the corner glowers a menacing stare

A pretty lady sits alone swaying to the music without a care

Conversations abound

Round and round and round

There's a serious couple having the talk

There's two other groping lower and higher

trying to burst into a lusting fire

And always - always one loner

who speaks only to his thoughts

While the night gathers her children in wrought 

For its about passing the night away

time and again

there is one cat who goes astray.

Time Hangs Upon A Wall

In a scene sitting upon a foundational slab...

 

High upon a mountain's perch

Reflecting on the sun’s search

For tomorrow’s scars;

As radiant sunlight burns like an inferno’s fire

Over the water’s surface (a brief candlelight) within a universe of stars.

 

 

Time awaits with a whispered breath

That dwells upon the mountain’s breadth

As the night shadows egress over the day’s joys and fears

Falling into an all consuming darkness

And then slowly; inexorably immortality too, disappears-

While motorized water crafts run in whimsical splash

Crisscrossing back and forth in mad dash...

Weaving webs in manic pursuit of their fantasies of play

Leaving behind wisps of white spray trails

As the pursuer is dressed in delusional fay

 

 

Morning brings the night’s survivors to break fast

Recounting and retelling the evening of missed past

Left amongst the empty shot glasses that rancor in a shrillness

And too, framed black and white photographs hang in perpetuity

at the Iron Horse Grill wall of stillness.

 

 

As the next generation picks up the tab...