I sit on this bench by a dead brittle tree,

hands folded like tired wrinkled wings.

The wind touches me but finds nothing to move.

My eyes search the middle distance

as if the past might rise from the field

and walk back to me with dark hair, barefoot, carefree and laughing.

 

I remember a lake,

Cold water, splashing across my naked body,

the sound of my excited voice echoing off stone.

There was a girl once,

or many, all blurred into the shape of longing.

Regretfully I cannot name them now.

Just a hint of a scent,

a flash of a smile caught in sun.

 

My body is quiet,

but something stirs beneath the years

a kind of ache that is not pain,

but absence.

I do not grieve the passing of time

so much as the forgetting

of who I was

when time didn’t seem real.

 

I watch some children run,

their joy sharp and wild.

They do not look at me, I am invisible 

And I dare not call out.

What would I say?

That once, I also believed

the world would wait.

That once, I ran without looking back.

 

Now, all my running has brought me here.

To this bench.

To this silence.

To the soft crunch of dry summer grass

and the long memory

of a life that does not pause

for farewells.