She sits on the rocks
in a demure bikini,
smiling up at me
from half a century ago.

Her smile says: it is
good to be 19, the whole
future an endless vista,
and the ferocious vigor
that makes up first love.

A sudden epiphany.

I am transported back
to that sliver of time.

A lifetime evaporates.

Not memory, but real Being.

I feel everything that was,
as if I am right there again
and no time has passed.

Aphrodite’s Smile knows
nothing of time. It is
eternal; spans centuries;
open to any willing heart.

Time is just a lie
we tell ourselves.

Beauty and Love
can never die.

— — — -

This poem is connected with a story I wrote. Read it at: https://bookgardener.medium.com/the-girl-who-knocked-a-drama-bbc89d3c4218

Poetry,
like sex,
momentarily
destroys
the misery
of the world.
Like an
exquisite orgasm,
for an instant,
you disappear
into it,
released from
the mundane
now.

What’s up Doc?

When you are living
your normal boring life,
you don’t seem to notice
how the time flies by.

While awaiting a diagnosis,
amazing how it slows.

Even your threatened
breath moderates.
Light days grow darker.
It takes longer to go
and longer to get back.
Each morning a surprise.
The calendar stutters
and forgets to advance,
but clocks circle faster.

You want to know and
you don’t want to know.

You wait for a verdict,
hope for a short sentence
from an empathetic judge,
knowing that even if
you get lucky this time,
it is only a reprieve,
at best a few more years.

Merciless, indifferent,
the future catches up and

ready or not,

it is your turn to leave.

Tempus destruit spes nostras.

Become an archeologist.
Master Greek and Latin.
Build my own cabin.
Apologize to all those
I’ve loved and harmed.
Read all the books. All.
Win the Cross-fit games.
Figure out what women want
and whisper the secret
to Freud in his grave
so he can finally get some rest.
Learn to juggle. Really.
Write just one, perfect poem.
Forget that unwelcome war,
at least the bad parts.
Be stalked by a cassowary.
Converse with an Alien.
Ever make it to India.
Hug my unborn grand-children.
Defile Richard Nixon’s grave.
Travel to outer space and
manage to get home again.
Waltz with a Duchess in Vienna.
Achieve Satori, then lose it.

That miserly bastard time seems
so very stingy with our dreams.

praeteritum est praesens

The scars of a lifetime describe
the essence of whom we have been.

Life devolves to what is lost.

Eschew slogans; admit the inevitable.
Time does not read self-help books,
nor care about your positive thinking.

And 70 is not the new 35.

Ghostly images crowd your head,
reduced to evocative reminders:
faded shades: lovers, people,
homes, places, things you owned,
impalpable but in recollection.

Present becomes memory.
A now shot full of holes
into which what was has
fallen away for good and
what isn’t overwhelms what is.

We live in the past pretending
that we live towards the future.

Lost boats beating against the wind.