Endless Days

The years go by and we feel them not within the fragile soul,

But deep within the weary bone that bears the burdened whole.

They gather weight with every grief our silent days have grown,

Till marrow bends beneath the load that time has slowly sown.

Our faces change, yet still we gaze and never truly see,

The creeping hand of years that writes its pale biography.

The mirror shivers, splits in two with dim and ghostly seam,

Yet we ignore the elder eyes that haunt us from the gleam.

They whisper low: “Oh wanderer, pause, be still a little while,

Before the hours devour the breath behind your fading smile.”

But onward still we haste each morn toward lands we do not know,

Where hearts feel foreign in the throng that moves in endless flow.

At four a.m. the darkness wakes, before the timid sun,

And day dissolves in night again ere we have quite begun.

The seasons pass like silent shades that drift beyond recall,

Unnoticed as the brittle leaves descend in autumn’s fall.

We labor down to aching bone, machines within the grey,

Our youth exchanged for clinking coins that vanish day by day.

And in the hollow left behind, a void both vast and deep,

No bread nor wine nor mortal hand can lull the ache to sleep.

The moon bleeds silver through the dark, a cold and watchful eye,

Eleven strikes, the hour when the dying minutes sigh.

And back we crawl to fractured lives, their remnants thin and worn,

To taste a half-hour’s ghost of peace before another morn.

Then once again the iron world demands our flesh and breath,

A patient forge where living men apprentice slow to death.

And all for coins, poor alchemy of sweat and passing years,

That pay for draughts of medicine and salt of hidden tears.

A soda’s fleeting comfort, and at last the somber cost,

Of timbered rest wherein the bones of weary flesh are lost.

A coffin carved for silent sleep beneath the patient sky,

When Death, long waiting at the door, grows tired… and calls us nigh.