“Timepiece”

 

c. 2025 Rod Ice

All rights reserved

(7-25)

 

 

I’ve reached the age

Where friends too quickly go away

Riding with an EMT crew on an emergency call

With a pulmonary crisis or a cardiac stall

Turning blue

Barefoot and wired up for medical clues

They invade my neighborhood on missions of mercy

Sirens and flashing lights, for Caleb, Carl, or Percy

I sit and stare, blankly

Wondering when my turn will be

As years accrue

And I am hobbled in the queue

Only then did I ponder, recently

That things might unravel, rapidly

This progression toward the cliff

Pushed and prodded by joints, aching and stiff

The fine details of a summer’s eve

No longer obvious to perceive

“What next?” I exclaim boldly and loud

No longer so confident, cocky, or proud

This is the agony that befalls

One who is blessed to grow old, and feeble, within trailer walls

A sardine packed in a tight space

Ruminating with a red face

This is how some grand designer chose to conclude

My slog through the brood

Generations trade their spots

Gravestones serve as forget-me-nots

I think of a pal from the Empire State

Who disappeared to an unknown fate

After attending a musical show

What happened no one seems to know

Yet now he inhabits a bed

At a skilled-care homestead

This contact and cohort

Of a memorable sort

Gone, gone, gone

While the timepieces chime and gong

I have to hang my head in a moment of penance

When recalling his sentence

And my brother, the younger genetic counterpart

Same flesh as my own, in mind and heart

Stumbled in his bathroom

Hit the floor with a thunderous boom

Bleeding and bawling, and dizzy

His celebration, cruelly turned into an emergency

In what hour will the clock strike midnight?

Footfalls echoing up my ramp

Under a glare of battery lamps

Shouted instructions

Trained warriors remembering their induction

Into the tribe

Of first responders, saving lives

I’d rather sit still and drink

Perhaps with a poet, prancing on the brink

John Cooper Clarke

My guide through the dark

Through his thick, optical shades, reading the text

Of a book penned especially for those who come next

Careening craftily, with artistic appeal

Horse hooves in a muddy field

My work shoes untied

In case of a need to slip back inside

So that I might avoid taking a trip

With those able apprentices of fellowship

Their cause is just

But I’d rather fall in the dust

Leave me where I lie

If this is the appointed hour to die

Let me be still, having passed

Silence comes, at last