LAST DAYS

Bottled Up

last days are just that
although i can hear you say, "what?
that's not gamesmanship at all!"
"this writer does not see the court and the ball."

yet, for the poet, it is the play
the play by play, which may
stop only when the clock winds down
and the sand, its last particle has flown

into a bottle with a waist so narrow
goes the sand and the debris it can borrow
to stretch the instance, believing it may be elastic
becoming as time goes, more and more caustic

then one not so dreary day
like many other one meets, on the way
the bottle to one side flops or is turned
with the sand defiled and churned

Even if there was a witness
to say, "there is still more sand your highness!"
to flow down, and some detritus
but the time keeper is egregious
and for the rest, it is only a hiatus

till a passing maid turns it up
whichever way she does a cup
causing a new life to be short for lack of sand
and no musicians to play the band

It is not poetic to consider aeons imprisoned in a child's beach pail
filled and left for life to survive, no matter how frail
all the time that stood and was swept in the wind
sand that traveled but never ceased