Shuttle Bus 17: A Poetry Collection

Seasons

Time is relentless

Time does not make allies,

Time is controlled, always

Revolving, how gears pulley

The clock tower, instruments

That measure this phenomena

Are minions to its creed, that

Though engaging in it is

Participatory, its elemental

Concurrence is but inevitable

Concoctions of herbal spices

With the fragrant cinnamon wick

Pleasure sensors do not mask the

Age of time, the numerical quantity

Of the inhabitants in its realm

Summer loving, spooning, nuzzling

Is in the vanquished past, and as

The ticking continues to displace us,

Our own bodies begin to mutilate

In motion with that of the sound

We prune, as that of fruit, fruit being

The foreshadowing of the engagement

Between life and afterward.

Leaves crunching beneath schoolchildren,

The beautiful hues of auburn, mustard, crimson,

Are afterimages of the soul,

How megapixels encapsulate a photograph,

The final glimpse, that synapses the gap

Between leaving spirits with future births,

The tree, though barren in branches, is

Civilization among Earth's many periods,

A gradient from prehistoric monuments to

Lingering plausible outcomes of 'What if?'

The tree is the Creator of the leaves,

And We are the Created, the product of

A process

I prefer to remember, not in the way of absence,

Of what could have been, but rather what was,

When the lake, loses its mesmerizing aqua,

And develops cataracts, a milky film,

Separating it, almost encompassing it,

From the youth and the fallen,

It presses itself as an open sore,

For the Future to rebuild, as the minnows

And bass feast, in the carcass of the Old,

They replenish its system with the New

Fall, in passing, merciless Time, is Dead

The remaining, aging populace passed on,

In ash, in rubble, in a gradient of compliance.

And yet, the cones, the leaves, the fruit,

Are crested in emblems, in remembrance,

For what it Was, not what it Could Have Been.

Their beauty remains as their corpses are lathered

In Gold and Silver,

For future families that live in Winter, can

Respirate new life for the coming year.