Holding on? Or letting go? A poem

Sedimentation

The years accumulate,

Are stacked and packed

Onto shelves that bend

With the weight that

Selves can barely bear;

Each volume printed,

Indexed, the pages uncut,

Stored against time,

In the library of us,

Undusted,

As if we could be read,

Could read, would read,

The diary we would keep,

Were there time,

Time to retreat, to start again.

And Time’s bending in the river’s flow:

The silted corners,

The stagnant oxbow lake,

The tributaries turned to backwater

Rush by now, glimpsed;

And all that fear and hope

Kicking against the current

That’s pulling us out to sea.

And what to say?

Tongue swollen with a brackish discontent

And life’s failures a wishbone in the throat.

The floods and droughts:

The ink running from the page,

Fading in the sun.

The time, the time …

The mind flails,

Swimming in the deep water of itself,

Or beached upon its own desolate shore.

Each day now begins blank, unwritten,

And closes so.

Each night the detritus settles, thickens,

And flowing slows.

And death opens its black, toothless mouth -

A lipless, estuary-wide smile -

And yawns.