Days of dawns and sunsets
When every hour is full
And every moment has a purpose
Measures of our small lives
Tick tock
Mortality's clock

Outside of ourselves
The crescendo and cadence
Universal movement and momentum
Always and endlessly
Travelling circles and orbits
The ghastly vastness of infinity
Defies human imagination

And yet
Our speck of existence
Tiny though it is
Is all that the cosmos owes us
And we should use it well
Wring every second dry
Open our hearts and minds
And fill them with living

                                        By Phil Roberts

Flowers lost in measure
At an outstretched hour
Born sightless in the once
Sacrosanct hedgerows
Picked belatedly

--And invisibly so--

Taken from their family
To unconditional surrender
Upon a cold stark table
Where those assembled
Finished off love with their meal

--And invisibly so--

Poetry that animates
   Your own creations

Poetry that stirs up
   Your own recipes

Poetry in motion
   Taking you somewhere free

Poetry, a passing stare
   Made you do a double glare

Poetry in locomotion
   That made you map out crazy

Agitates, oscillates, fluctuates
   Darkness, light or in the shadows

Tempestuous because you like
    The moody and absurd words

Poetry, the outlet of imagination
   For things that need to be written

When did I get so old?
In my 20s, 30s and 40s I had life
by the tail, active and productive,
breaching horizons and
accomplishing significant things.
Thought I had all the time in the world.

In my 50s I could still run the track,
bench press 225 and make love with
all the passion of a younger man.
Old age was never on my mind.

In my 60s I could still walk without
a limp, climb medium mountains
and date woman 20 years younger.
Trying to ignore my bodies ever
increasing aches and pains.

In my early 70s, old age descended
upon me like some pernicious thief,
diminishing and stealing my physical
and intellectual strengths.

And yet at 75, in my minds eye,
I still think and feel like I am 25,
or so I try to delude myself.
Though my physical body does
stubbornly, remind me otherwise.
Dating women of any age is definitely,
completely off my mind. Preferring a
single man's life of unchallenged tranquility.

In the sum total of a persons allocated
few decades of life what remains are
wonderful vivid memories, of love
given and received, of children born,
and of natures beauty seen and felt
from climbing lofty mountain peaks.
Of a life lived that seems all too brief.

Make no mistake, life flies by like a
speeding commuter train on a one
way track, with absolutely no return
tickets being purchased or issued at
any worldly price.