"BORNE BACK CEASELESSLY INTO THE PAST"

Here
(in the here and now)

the Present
nails down

the reality of everything
it sees.

It fixes this sun
to that sky.

A bird breaks
free from the trees.

The lake lapping
at her sandalled feet.

Her watch tells her
it is five past three.

Her sunburnt face.
Its constellation of freckles.

She can not see
this time

ever ending. . .

But it does.
It did.

Now fifty years
have come and gone.

Things float away
into the past.

The sky has been
replaced

by a sky
newer than the one she'd known.

The bird has flown away.
The trees cut down.
The lake no longer knowing her.

She does not have time
tied to her wrist.

She dislikes trapping the world
in tick tocks.

Her face pale now.

Forgetting who
she had been.

She looks at herself
in black and white.

A stranger
stares back.