I look through life with a periscope.

The mirrors sullied and scraped.

I see the walls of my castle allotrope.

And the portraits my imagination never escaped.

I look out the window to the warm lamplight.

And ponder where it went?

The desk sprawls like a poet’s plight.

It smiles with a wink in discontent.

Time, like my clock, feels aloof.

While the stranger in the reflection blinks back at me.

As if the world standing idly by needed further proof

Of how the Strangeness grows under the tree.

Time is the peril of our wandering.

Life soon closes, as it should.

Every story leaves us squandering.

The seconds become hours, that is understood.

The days become weeks, the seasons crash and they merge.

The months become years, so certainly.

And quite suddenly, we hear our dirge.

We ask for an hour more, so carelessly.

Standing alone with our enveloping thought.

Of the thousands and thousands of words spoken.

We still stare aporetically, our pupils black as naught.

We drift alone restlessly, our dreams lying there unbroken.

Alone with our tethers do we find ourselves bound.

And though wordlessly we may walk unseen.

Time is but a leisurely reminder of something more profound.

That we live Life forgetfully, leaving a century in-between.

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash