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Metronome

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