It Moves On

Fishing, Kenai Beach. Photo by Author.

You can’t stay always
in the place the light never leaves.
You can’t have a pair of eyes
that never fails;
you can’t live forever
in the sunlit chambers
of the unbroken heart.

The shell of the nautilus
the wheel of the galaxy
the spiral clocks on the faces
of a thousand sunflowers
will all someday unwind.
Forever isn’t as long
as it was when your mother
sang you the first song you ever heard.
Everything was new then:
fierce raw skin and nerves.
When you cried, the sun seemed astonished.
Now it pulls clouds over its face
and steps out for a cigarette.