Aging Against Time

That thing: ripening in your chest – pulsing slower with time. 

Within, Eve’s indulgent breath plunges  

like fetid fruit – Heavy in sugar. 

‘Reveal, Autumn. Let us know what stays, and  

What stays dreaming through the night’. 

And Autumn only slowly keels  

Over-bared by tints of borrowed sun. 

So then ask the tree, instead, for your soul’s weight in time -  

But, burdened by the bulbs of knowing all (and knowing far), 

The saggy-eyed oak only wisps a web  

Too feather to untangle. 

Green for skin, turn your misery sidewards 

Demand for fate the pliant wish-bowl, 

Within, the frail moon drowns, reeling back like steam, 

It sheds. To bear a skull of roughened bark. You hold: 

The weight of her feels similar – What is it like? Bring it 

Closer than tongue – and it begins to touch as though 

You hold yourself – but that is nothing good. 

Yet, pull your ear closer to the mumbling pool, hear 

Ears drink in deep her lukewarm flush: 

Calming lilt, like wind, forward rushed –  

‘Hush,’ breathes Fate, 

Always guiding with practiced craft. 

Gathering your face like silk, stuck sleek – yes,  

To pool like heart-wrung Ophelia who, by the mud and moss, is 

Swaying always to a pulse of the dam, as if  

Always Beckoning 

Age trapped in Time.