Time destroys it all,
even the heartbreaks, but then,
raises up new intricacies.
And I wonder at this thing called change,
whether, as some would hold,
it is merely illusion
overtop that which is eternally steady —
or if it is the hinge upon
everything, the necessity to all existence:
and that nothing stays,
all of it in constant transformation.
And Wilde said that
the mystery of love is greater
than the mystery of death, but
how does the mystery of time figure?
Often to let the first go,
and on inevitably toward the second,
I think I know better
what will be my end than how I get there.
Time, too, is final,
for its reversal can never be,
time, the co-conspirator
to our greatest extrapolations,
our smallest trivialities:
perhaps it is less than even death, though,
for it is no visceral thing,
for the most part, a dalliance
into the metaphysical,
and we think of it not so much
except when it pours out to the last,
and slips from us with all our days —
friend better to the Reaper
than even in our beginning ever was to us.
reflection