"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...