Time Poem by Lonnie Hicks

I've had Time sweep me up
sequester me away
to stillness consummate.

I've had Time punish me
in slogging eons of instants unnamed.

She has often sat with me
my only friend
soothing my brow
telling me
that She will make things right
in her Time.

She swept up my kids
so soon from infants
through toddler-hood
to children grown
who wrapped up in their own time
could not remember the way home

She whispered to me in Still Time
of my wrongs and follies
my over-bearing triumphs
my false humilities
earned and given me
by her and Life.

But I know that she
in the end
is my final arbiter
in whose arms
I shall lay
to receive her final kiss;

there I'll give her my final wish
that she end with me
such that
my time
and her time
shall forever
remain
co-terminus;

but I know this will not be so;
she will close my eyes
with promises
that she will never keep
because she knows Human Beings
cannot contemplate
being without her
as she proceeds
with new allotments
for those who come after
and the kids.

'Never' she said to me
'are they ready to leave me.
But I must and I never can tell them the
Grandest Secret
of all
and that secret is all of the atoms
in their bodies
fly away
only to return
inside somebody else's body.

'Time, 'she said
properly understood
is Time
of the
Eternal Return
nothing is ever lost
all is
merely
rearranged
I too
takes Einstein's route
and come back
younger than I am
but within someone else's
Yin and Yang.
'That I said is comforting.'
'Death' she said 'is the name we give
to our fear of change.'