and benign as
a flat circle;
time is a screwlock,
a pitiless vice,
extracting the vigor,
then discarding
the pulp of life.
The longer we may live,
the more we may
grow horrified
at our resign as it carves off
with its inexorable knife
the gory
yet nourishing
gristle of the details
and winnows away
the only latterly
obvious chaff
of what mattered to us
so intensely once,
but eventually, we must
all humbly admit
to be dust.
