Member Poem

The Enigma of Time

Though there’s barely a drop in the brooks and the creeks,
   nearly dry as the open-air pools,
time’s protean arrow — today a bolero,
   tomorrow a jig — soon will cause
pears and apples to fall and leaf chaos to sprawl,
   while the youth sit like jailbirds in schools.

Blue dragonflies dart above moss-covered ponds,
   and on puddles the water bugs race
as speedily streaking for prey they are seeking
   near patches of soil and stones
as many an atom will, in an air stratum,
   whip round its cerulean space.

Though the days still feel warm as a dog’s underbelly,
   night by night all the crickets get colder,
their chirps getting slower, their pitch getting lower,
   till soon their shrill songs disappear
as the migrating birds fly away like the words
   of the whispering trees growing older,

their leaves turning golden and scarlet and brown.
  While the daffodil eye in the sky
will get meeker and shyer — look! — higher and higher
   the stars of Orion will rise.
When deep snow blankets all, we will hardly recall
   summer’s heat. Not a soul can defy

the flight of the rotating earth round the sun
   in a galaxy, whirling away
like a slow-spinning pail full of Newcastle ale
   or the sweep of the hands of a clock
or a sunflower’s face as it swivels to chase
   that light every life must obey.