by Steve King
© 2001
All rights reserved
It came an early autumn,
but I’d an expectation,
an inkling of the coming phase.
They say you feel it in your bones
once past some certain age;
that each year passes quicker
the more years that one sees.
Yes, I do feel like that antic rat
upswept in his whirling cage.
The imminent future accelerates.
With like haste, youth recedes.
There is always distraction
from the present stage.
You think both in terms of moments
and great leaps of the heart.
Which hopes would you put aside
to gain yourself a day?
Which times would you banish
to recast a sorry past?
Which times would you now replay?
Which would you outlast?
How will you fill the void before you?
How will you dream, and of what?
Just how will you finger each turning page?
Soon…
Soon there will be only speed,
without note of seasons;
hastening twilights
to swallow vanishing dawns.
Soon, soon enough…
There is a coming autumn, true,
but not there in the bones:
it is an umber of the heart,
a rising shadow in the soul
no springtime may erase.
