Though now far away
At the crossroad of your life
You draw ever near.

Thomas Carlyle said
the present is the living sum total
of the whole past.

Now, when I look back
over the history
that is the sum total
of my life,
there are aspects
that are hard to
fathom.

There are black holes
where one might expect
to encounter
a white hole’s event horizon,
while other events
have apparently failed
to intersect
my preferred boundaries.

Arithmetic’s never been my strength
and I suspect that
at one stage or another
I may have
put a decimal point in
the wrong place.

I was born wise
and have spent the better part of a century
trying to constrain
buffoonery.

I have lived in interesting times
I have endured many different climes
Much of my life has been bizarre
But now, calling me from afar,
I begin to hear those compelling chimes

Ill fares the land
Where statesmen do transgress;
Where sin soars out of hand
and honor does regress,
and we value honor
less and less.

For years I have suspected that I may be living
in a parallel universe.
This is a suspicion that has been reinforced
over the decades
by the continual depletion of my contemporaries.

And now I must ask myself:
if it is indeed true that I am on a different continuum
of space and time from all those others
who have formed a part of my existence,
then perhaps I am also responsible for its decline.

If, by the power of my thought,
by the essence of my existence, I am the progenitor
of the series of catastrophes, calamities, and cataclysms
that continually clapperclaw my world,
then perhaps I can also bring a sense of calm.

And if I do not choose to do so,
if I allow, by my own negligence,
that catalogue of crime to be unleashed
against a helpless world,
then am I not the culprit?

It is a chilling thought.

A mournful
Waterfall
Of sound
A gentle
Susurration.

A sad cascade
Reverberates
In timeless
Melody
And tuneless
Tempo.

Disturbs
My soul
And disconcerts
My spirit.