And For The Older Poet

How long have these words been around
like a hug, or paper weave, when all
the parts find together again?  This always
circling, crows murdering sunsets, events
trampling the views with absurdities, life
taking resolutions and shoving them from
the speeding streetcar; it leaves time
befuddled, an old man with crutches for
each and every emotion and memory. 

Perhaps it begins with the first moment
of conception, when such momentous
decisions are made, as though a tarot
deck is tossed into the air to land by
chance, and by circumstance colour all
those unpredictable events which lead
to death.    At that point, perhaps it is
easier to mumble ‘fate’, and shake
your head, apologetically smile, as though
the storm of conception passed by far
to the south, rumbled through those
mountains of history which are ever
hidden by mist, more fantasy than fact.

To have a reason seems easier than to have
a choice; to look at the interference of Zeus
seems easier than to understand that the
storms which are slowly sinking the floundering
ship are nothing more than November
weather, nothing more than the last time your
hands reached out, accepted the cat’s cradle
and altered it for a moment before the
next hands were there, ready to carry on
in an alien way.