Like Pipe Smoke...

Time reaches into its pockets then flings into the sky

Its leaf, like soldered lockets filled with hello and goodbye

Man grapples with thought-pieces; squints at his enlightenment

While ignorance still reasons with Time’s season-indictment

The clock is like a shepherd where its tick-tock flowers spill

Like sheep into a pasture swiftly stripped of summer-twill

He herds his flock of hours into days, then months and years

Beyond a Gate; futile to wait; Past never re-appears

Yet, ever easy-going Time sprawls on empyrean slope

To watch his newborn offspring spin a tiralee of hope

Where earthlings scramble, he ambles, knowing though we take-take

His pockets never empty and his lockets never break

The pull of seasons never wanes; September shuts her eye

Its lullaby of leaf-song rains and drains the sighing sky

It weeps beneath the wanderer, whimpers where sense beguiles

In echoes of a simpler time; Time tamps his pipe and smiles

© Janet Martin