A Clock Face Stranger

By chance, the dreamer rarely counted fading,

but suddenly starts to weigh paths against strangers

and is startled to learn how much shorter this road bends than theirs.

The seeker never traced the moments with patient sight before,

and went on boasting of golden dawns, flushed like harvest wine.

Yet this evening the glass of the sundial discloses another

frail and chalk-white as a wind-beaten feather.

This vessel has slowly leaned toward silence,

and the remaining nights must be carried in halting strides.

Too late arrives the warning that weaving already unraveled;

and now, what journey still endures?

Ancient flame and faithful currents whisper dimly through the bones,

and neither joy nor grief replies to their cadence.

A slender kindness must be sharpened to pierce through longing;

the shadow-clock that restores hours is, clearly, a myth.

Alley songs, softly climbing beneath lantern haze,

beckon the drifter to wander and sing beside them.

Even the imagining drains the heartbeat;

a moment’s rising, then a slow unraveling away.