Yesterday, Tomorrow

A poem

Yesterday I was small
And immortal
A little boy digging in the sands
Of Waikiki
Thinking of nothing
But the treasures I would mine
Today my own children have hurdled time
Skipping the line
A fast pass to adulthood
Ready to be weighted with worries they’ll carry to the future
Into a distance I won’t witness
Memories of them like a trail of crumbs
Falling further behind
As they march beyond the bounds of my keeping
Never hearing the clock ticking
Leaving my arms empty
Two decades of life, near on, spent bent to one goal
So I turned, and there was a legion of ghosts I’d known
Behind me
Figures forgotten, faces blank
Staring past me
Grasping at some former iteration
Who’d made an impression
A litany of names unfurling into oblivion
Voices bursting like overripe peaches
Saccharine strains vying for audience
Some vaulting for the ether, with strife
Shouts breathing heat at one another’s mouths
Until they realized
There is no you, nor is there a me
To settle accounts with
Accidents of circumstance, we two
Tricks of arithmetic
Shadows on the wall
The sun erases, as it crosses the sky
A difference measured in nanometers
Between particles passing
It is a place, a holy titan
An implacable face, of an unrelenting force
That moves by its own unbending rules
A cage we each carry with us
Never conscious of the punishment it wreaks
Or the doom cast by its hands
In a slow, patient advance
One that trudged in its own methodical pace
Reflecting with care, on the labor of ages
Bent in grand turns of fate indifferent to your existence
With you too small to notice
Your eyes focused elsewhere
Feet carrying you to a different moment
Mind occupied, with a quest on the side
Tarrying in warmth too long
Dallying, with your feet in the water
Where cares curl past your toes
In the uncounted currents
Laughing and singing
Your faces slowly fading
Looking over your shoulder not once
Because the future never arrived
You always had another chance
When there was a tomorrow,
Yesterday

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