The Future

At what point did the present stop
Being present and become the future?

I wake and I am no longer secure
In the bedclothes as I’ve always been.

Nothing threatens, but there is nothing
I know I can safely rely on either.

Was it just another tick of the clock?
The one too many? The fatal one?

Is it only what I’ve lost, beckoning,
Being ignored, rescinding sanctions

Of such long standing I’ve forgotten
How crucial they were to my senses?

Time? Or self? No, what I now fear
Is the two become the same thing -- 

A last fling, a dance that whirls me from
My partner’s arms into dimming air.

Ahead

The gull leads us down the beach

In false starts, runs, hesitant hops,

Picking dinner from the sand.

With an exaggerated screech

When we get too close, it stops —

Swoops ten feet ahead and stands.

Before

It is all before, which is all

That’s left. Thinking hits a wall

When it confronts what’s to come,

Unknown numbers, null in sum.

A chimera slips into the room

Then disappears into its womb.

We knew it by its straightened tail,

But never glimpsed its toothless

Maw — nor heard its lonely wail.

Leave before? No, it is ruthless,

Determined to wait — patient

As a tomb — beckoned and ancient.

Number

The number of dates

Ever proliferates.

Each, pinned down, waits

Until all are done —

One and one and one.

We wake and sleep and wake

Without the slightest break

In the dropped mirror

Of each memory’s error.

I remember tomorrow,

Waves of it, row on row,

Just within my reach

On this particulate beach

That myriad suns bleach.