It takes approximately 30 years to get the message
that time is actually turning,
that this whirled world is headed somewhere,
that the mirror shows us a new face every time,
only it's nice enough to reveal us gradually
so we're not driven suicidal all at once.

We are creeping towards night
but only because it's day.
The dark clouds loom.
They move into the room.
The sun looms over them.
Do the flowers suffer in rain?
The Black-eyed Susans nod
with tears, Yes, yes, yes.

Yellow is plentiful in our meadow today.
The sun blowing its light all over the grass.
I am not comfortable unless surrounded
by green: grass, leaves, stems.
They place me. They hold me there.
The forest is a spa.

Today, Summer, growth is winning
but the birds are not singing
about transcendence. In fact,
they are quite unhappy.
The sun barrels through the sky
burning away clouds.
The living flute of the beak is forcing
agonized notes into the indifferent face
of a sky so blue as to be totally mundane.

The earth retraces its steps,
an insatiable nomad
or obsessive looking for
something it lost
however many years back.

What it finds is the same handful of skies,
a pearl necklace of stars
strung across it's murky night.
I've been dragged on almost 30 trips already.
It's the same **** every time.