Old Dogs

We are not the ones we were - anymore.

Time has challenged us;

won cold battles in the war;

Lengthened our long shadows under the sun;

Shifted our characters - unfazed - into the cracked; the crazy,

Washing us out

onto whiskey-red shores. 

As all things in the world

Fragment

we slipped in sleep

downstream

through the falls of mornings

Flashing in the green, the blue; the bright gold.

We sung in unison with stars

While the score still scored its trance

But now - no more…

The songs skip rings as we sing its grooves;

Our lips move crookedly.

Let me not lie to myself 

But believe in Love and be old now, 

Another puppet in the show - I now know -

Carves puppets of us all.

Winking in my nature at the dust and loud dogs on the doorstep;

Banging at the frames again.

I would not lie to them

The game has changed - all unchanged.

Bones of our memories will dry

We cannot rule or fight the widening tide

But just keep on in this functioning flow

That flows 

and flows -

Through its highs and lows -

Drinking its drink of us;

Strengthening and silencing sweet lives

inside Time.

(2012) 

revised ed here.