TIME, GENTLEMEN, TIME
CARMODY: We ought not take too long describing the winds or the leaves that
dance along them. Ah.
BLIGHT: What the older man knows. That’s my objective.
Then you tell the truth,
when you shift your focus onto
things that bubble up
from below, stark underneath,
you can’t stop them coming up.
His mouth hangs widely
open, his truths unable
to form themselves
into solid things, they flutter
on the stale wind of his breath.
When time is spent,
and once spent not to be found
again. All the things
I did but can’t remember, how
love slides away like a dream.
Charles Tarlton is a retired professor living and writing poetry in Northampton, MA with his wife, Ann Knickerbocker, an abstract painter.