Gathering Time

 Gathering Time (Title of Simon Baxter's Book)

We

Well I

For I can only speak for myself-

Have had this lifelong project

To gather time

In words and memories

That traverse along a continuum 

That is tracked like a train across a Kansas prairie

Or a junkies arm

I don't know

Really

I don't know and even with directions

I wander off the path

Into the detritus of our cultural eclipses

Which pull us in like a magnetic north

Making us think we off in the correct direction

Only to find we have wandered to an edge of a cliff

Or a brick wall with a sign that says "You Have Arrived"

When in fact you are just lost

Just lost

I have gathered time

Used my rake to make piles of time

Like fall leaves in late October

Still flaked with colors

Yellows, oranges and reds

Making their way back into the earth

To feed the worms 

But this gathering

That's really what I started to say

Before I got sidetracked again on 

Kansas, junkies, and the North Pole

Is a lifelong agenda item

That pages itself on my to do list everyday

It too has fall colors and streaks of black and white

It too falls away each day and sinks down feather like

Somewhere I still cannot see

jrm

1/30/2022