Frost’s swaying birches and Whitman’s ferry muscling through the Brooklyn waters

            had their own eloquence. They framed the movement of their minds through time.

Time folds in on itself

And makes sharp lines in memory like the deep creases in a soft old suit

      that cannot be shaken out.

These poets knew the importance of time,

And measured it out in formal tones and elegiac images of nature.

They understood also the reverence of silence.

Yet silence is the death of art.

And so they struggled – and created beauty.

Memory always remains,

   even when time betrays us.

And art – the intermediary - negotiates the gains and losses.

I prefer my experiences frozen and stately,

     each in its own place.

An ordered life is a gift.

 But a life without memories is no life.

I cannot swing from hanging branches

Or ride the placid Brooklyn waves.

My life is honed by concrete and steel:

Dust and noise shut out wind and water.

In my mind I travel between past memories  and  present desires,

Moving to the rhythms of my  present,

Dreaming of beauty forever just beyond my reach.