Laconic tears or Botticelli's Venus
holding the years
like tresses
in a wistful pose.
Tenebrous youth accosted
by callow Time
bleeds the heart
with spring aloes.
No comfortable shibboleths
to restrain the wriggling polyps
in the skin or nestling hair.
Gerundive in movement,
each particled whimper
of the clock surrounds
a cloistered second
poised about the bearded target.
As far as you know, nothing unusual.
A total of eight hundred months
but grammar school sums,
spiel & mileage
to drift across a lifetime.
At thirty, the best half of the potage
is gruel hand drawn from
the sabulous pot.
38
***************************************************************