Time will catch you up like an undertow,
rip you into its current.
You can’t swim sideways to safety.
You cannot parallel time.
It will drag you into deeper pasts and a choking brine.
You can drown where time will take you
in the tears of your own salt.
Sunken joy pressured under phathoms of sea
yet clear to behold becomes a curse remembered old.
Stay out of the oceans you’ve floated young.
Though you still remember how to swim
you’ll backstroke now, looking always behind.
Everything there is gone and where you’re going
you cannot see.
Wash yourself up on a beach and dry your wings.
It’s time, and time will fly.
J.MICHAEL SHELL 