Inside a wind of tannic coldness
emanations of secret books and treatises,
musing upon old warnings of protean
creatures slouching again toward Bethlehem.
The good and the bad passing to destruction.
Then a long shaft of amber sunlight seems to race
down the center of the sky like a paean
to the close of day and the coming of night
and the cooling of the earth….
…and without warning, in a kind of ecstatic pirouette,
we might see light trapped high in the sky
and find we are looking through an aperture
at our future as though we are children,
each morning bringing with it
a resilience and clarity that was like
a divine hand offering a newly picked peach,
the winds of youth and spring echoing
eternally, offering us access
to all the fruits the world has to offer.
The promise of those full and lovely hours of childhood
can never come again, save in brief moments of love
which temporarily give back to us the simple enthusiasms
of our earliest years while the rhythmic sound
of the metric ticking of an unwatched clock,
each tick a little closer than the last,
the fume and wind of time, like the testimony to a plan,
a reminder that we are surrounded by ordinary people
who share a common struggle…
could insulate us and make the world stop…
Still, we would sacrifice everything
in order to reach imprisoned loveliness.
‘Tis time: write the fifth act….
Rapt, then slip back….
and know that our lives
have the viability of a moth
attempting to shape a flame.
The only true Paradise Paradise lost.
Will Hemmer is a retired college math teacher and a producer in Los Angeles. He has produced seven plays and two concerts.
