Time slips its leash and moves 

into the garbage dump of memory 

to hunt discoveries buried deep 

under the detritus of a life hardly spent 

in chewing each event to yield its marrow. 



There lie the tattered shirts of feeling, 

soiled from bloody spots of marriages 

unmassaged by remorse at being cast away. 

There the children's bears, stuffing 

beaten out the day I left and never came again.