"Reflections of a Sophist" by Dan Pettee

In due time,

tomorrow never comes;

the dominance of dust intrudes

and the images reduce themselves

to blurred particles of non-meaning;

bodies burn out like lights,

ideas wash away like sand-penned words

in freeze-frame thunderstorms

scudding across a midweek afternoon;

a woman's thigh fails to flash

within the lowland's lassitude,

and all one's erstwhile reckless rhymes

are metronomic breaths, mnemonic nuances,

nothing more.

And yet...

when destiny,

like some ambrosial opiate,

beckons to one's inner thirst,

who among us can resist?

The wagon wheels go tumbling,

and time's

the needle's eye which no one passes through...