Time

Time


A park where homeless people sleep, even in this damp cold.
Late hour bars, groggy patrons stumbling home, often alone.
Some carry guns for protection; but who would think
a need to shoot me? What would they gain if they did?
Other creatures of the night, junkies, pros, prowlers,
kids no one wants.
Deep night is my poacher’s forest.
I am in some senses exhilaratingly free,
in so many senses bound,
to instinct, to torment, to destiny.
I do what I do. I am what I am.
Where? When?
Sometimes I pretend it matters.
There really are endless possibilities.
I like the dank, rainy nights.
Blurred lights, the insistent sound of wetness
like street blues.
I like to find my way to open water, to look,
entranced, into blackness, mesmerized by
the rippling, the rhythm, the waves,
caressed by the wind.
Many mortal lives are sadder than mine.
All the drivel goes on and on, but then
moments appear.
They appear, hold me so closely that their
perfume becomes my soul.
And then the moment goes, forever,
like every other, each beautiful and unique.
Mostly I don’t think about the vast grey
everyday, or what might occur, or what is occurring.
Time washes over while I imagine little capsules
of perfect beauty, or self-loathe
into a frenzy of empty rage.
In all this time, I suppose I might have
made myself better, taken a long-term interest
that paid off or at least made me cultured
and debonair.
Where does all that time go?
When I look to remember, my mental resistance
insists it knows best.
Memories arise in bite-size reveries that
quietly dissipate as tangential thought takes hold.
To look at it all, to even contemplate that ride,
is repellent.
I have important skulking and hiding to attend to.