Fleeting, rolling days, weeks,
years of half-memories with
no faces,
but places - parks,
playgrounds, forests, ditches -
in which youthful time was
spent without a thought for
permanence or preservation.
The "best years of your life"
twisted, tarnished, pastel-
smeared to indistinguishable
faces, places, seasons,
feelings, fears, loyalties -
scrunched up and abandoned;
left to seep inside a clockwork mind
teeming with trivial tenterhooks
and patchwork recollections.