Sonnet For All Who Follow Me

Crows and leaves beyond the windowpane, a cup of steaming coffee on the stool, my lines reflected in your eyes, which strain in light as mine once did, the feel of wool that keeps our stomachs, chests, and shoulders warm unite us, you now, I who came before. You wonder how I lived, and ask what harm beset my age? Floods, earthquakes, famine, war. Pain transcends the centuries is all that I can say in speech that has no tenses. My words part oaks and fly beyond a wall. They are lamplight reflected in our lenses, the taste of coffee, cawing in the fall, the language of the five immortal senses.