The Watch Seller

The promise of morning, the flea market bustle
rouses tired hands to lay out old friends.

Faces he knows as well as his own
watch with timeless abandon.

He sets each precisely with intimate touch,
deft as forgotten caresses;

gathers their stories, pulling them close
in the bittersweet truth of parting.

Come afternoon, those hands will slow;
kissed cold by the late Autumn air

and a passing whisper in his ear -
somewhere a bell is tolling.