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Chin |
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| Why one keeps going, resolutely pushing the rock? An uphill task, I assure you, one endures throughout his life. Above that front, the clouds of his thoughts mass. "Firmly resolved, |
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his jaw set, he bore down on the opposition and would have carried the day, except . . . " Etc. In the end, so what? There were advantages, risks, and all one can do is look back. I'll be old, |
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rheum will trickle, and I'll rub my aches. Too tired to push the weight a blessed notch, I'll sit and learn an old man's gape, while ligaments shrink. The stars come out |
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very slowly, into the murk. Its strings cut, the wind's just a touch. On the plain beneath, cows stop grazing and bellow, clean-muzzled in the cropped grass. There's the herd boy, |
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stoning a pond. Now he turns home, driving the herd in front, and the crow on his shoulder flies off, words he was taught stored in a skull feathered from night. Whoosh! that's it, lights out, |
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not a whit comes back. I was kidding, we have more, even if the view's been wiped, doodles on slate. It was just a way of saying I creak like the springs of a cot. As codgers will, I shuck every burden; |
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| a few friends gather to reminisce. We see, beneath us, what? Lanterns the ones down there lit, a handful at first, to seek us out? We'd push dirt onto them, if it weren't such work. If we left a trace. |
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