How tidy, the shape we ascribe to a day,
suggesting we fit our lives into squares,
neatly assign them numbers, then tear
them off in the morning and throw them away.
Calendars march in most orderly rows:
always a sequence of sterile white blocks,
they’re soon enough packed in a banker’s box
along with the end of a job—but those
days spent waiting for love never home
are borderless, more like a sea of sand
than any geometry ordered by man,
sad as a sand castle losing its form.
And days misshapen, waiting for pain
to finally dissipate, long after night—
days like a fever, gray more than white—
those days a calendar cannot contain.
The end of life defies the square—
the shadow of shapelessness hovers there.
The spirit waits ‘til no one is near,
then flies beyond boundaries, into the air.
#poetry #passageoftime #death #aging #babyboomers
