Metronome
Life began with furtive footsteps
etched in damp sand
Tentative imprints aggravatingly and incessantly and
Ceaselessly washed
By the pendulous rush of frothy surf
and finely eradicated
My ancestors grew limbs, in time
Strode deep into the verdant forest
Floors awash with bygone leaves
Yellow, red, dark umber, and multiple other related hues
Tattered leaves, mangled leaves, old and bitter
Leaves constantly falling and flailing like crazed metronomes
Obscuring their footprints there and others’
There goes history
The impress of parents and grandparents, vaguely remembered
And other misremembered memories
And cultures vaguely known nor understood
Nor lived
As pendulums passing
From the valleys and seas and the magnificently alit mountains and
Other unimagined worlds
I am frenzied and lost and
And erratic
Like the sweep and thwunk of a wrecking ball
Besieging building blocks
Of carefully crafted journeys
Of limned pages lived, of incautious memoirs
I hop a ride on that wrecking ball
In understanding
Toward the onset of midnight