Today’s cloud is a rainbow
Dark blue
Light blue
Orange
Pink
With white
Outlines

Some clouds are Pentecostal fury
Orange cotton burning
With daylight’s rage
Swirling and smoking
Working themselves
Up into a storm of retribution

The clouds descend
Bluish grey beasts
Swallowing
The skies
Consuming
All things in sight
Leaving nothing
But a lone tree
To stand against
The rain and sleet

hours drip slowly
onto a taunting empty page
the soul’s depictions brushed simply

a palette of whispered words
dry as if it were thoughts painted
onto a tightly stretched canvas

it's been said so many times before
                   similes,...
     form clots at the tip of the quill
                    words,...
finally surrendering to gravity’s flow
as the ink scribes the paltry ruminations;
flooding the same stifled notions
another way into another moment

metaphorical sleights of hand
incarnate onto the absolving
       sheet of parchment;
traces of past now’s ensconced
       in considered words

        miles of silent reverie,
                     spun,...
        like a spider reprocessing,
        carefully savoring
        each fine silk thread of web,

        spinning the womb of time...

© H.A.  Rivers 2012 … All Rights Reserved

time is
the space in which we grow
   without awareness
   in our early years
structured by meals
   arrivals and departures
   light and dark
   hot and cold
   school   studies  play  adventures
   celebrations
and by waiting
   anxiously or not
for things to happen

time is
that feeling
that we may not have enough of it
in our later years
busy with jobs and family and travel
covering long distances in order to
achieve and educate and care

time is
what starts to rush by us
with increasing speed
in our final years
making us wonder
what it really means

that space
by which we measure
our lives
   our universes
      our worlds

time is