mercurial
in its rising
eloquent until
silence falls
after all the days before
for all those that now
in time
there were only
fine words and woe
at the centre of things
fragile hostages in that place
where the dead were
under guard
in limbo
alone on the watershed
of some middling
distance
too many ideas had come there once
elevated on the octane of enthusiasm
glowing with the rising sun of invention
deflated at the peak like cheap balloons
time was
will always be
fickle in its promises
impossible to hold back
constant and unforgiving
it carries us with it
bears witness
moves on
as the curve
of our high ideals
plummets
and the things of earth
fall back
to bury themselves
we speak
so highly of effort
write its name in letters
that shine then fade away
monuments crumbling
mountains sliding
like the time that built them
back into history
back into nothing much
© BH, 2020
After Friday and Thursday, the pattern was set. A week of poems, one for each day. Let them come, I said, and the days rolled on.
This one got me caught up with the middle-of-the-week thing. But then there is Woden/Odin and Mercury: gods associated with communication, travel and the dead. In the end I pitched for a day of watershed representing a kind of midpoint from which days and, maybe, time in general, ebbs and flows.
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