Not Reversible

Life is not reversible We are framed to follow the Future Fate lays out her dark instruments Where the wind is calling you on To your lonely pilgrimage Does your cultural skin still fit? Drink deeply of words Spilling out from the waves of language The past is a litter of dead letters Blowing along ghost highways Where the starling sleeps on the wing Under the hard rain You are allowed to look back Like two faced Janus, turning on a hinge You are allowed to look back On areas well loved of outstanding beauty You are allowed to reflect on uncomfortable times But you're powerless to wipe out their footprints Twist your eyes like an owl Scan your periphery, as you wobble On the lip of tomorrow Use your instincts to probe Shadows, bogs, what's under blind frozen water Holding the milky cataract of the moon Beneath the brittle stars Thousands of thoughts like crows Have darkened your mind down the years Driving you scared like a startled hare Where terrors proliferate Where infancy's teddy, wall eyed Stripped bare of fun, stretches out to claim you With stiff, unyielding arms