Expiration Date
A poem for these times of waning sense and fading glory.
I felt inspired to write something totally different today—a poem—though I think it fits the feeling of these times.
The grass leans lightly away from the wind,
as the light grows dim in the once-golden fields,
now gray at the fall of day.
The song of evening bird cries across the plain,
and the earth waits to receive a rain
long in coming.
Summer sets in the western sky,
and trees nearby gently sigh
as the weather starts to turn,
their branches full of ripening cones
ready to provide an autumn feast
for squirrels and birds
with a few to spare and lie on earth
through winter snow beneath a blanket of needles
in wait of spring’s new birth.
—
I lie on my side in childhood sleep.
Though indoors, my cheek feels wet with the falling dew
because, as a child, I camped on the lawn
and watched the skies in eager search
of meteors and UFOs
till my eyes fell closed and cold.
Now, of that time, I wistfully dream,
content to let the cares of day fade away.
I recall a kinder earth,
a livelier path,
filled with quickening days and brighter hopes
and evening games of kick the can
or capture the flag
or baseball until it was too dark to see.
—
That was a time with no “play dates,”
just a ride on my bike along the street
to call a game from home to home
to meet in the back schoolyard.
Bring your bat, your ball, your mitt,
and choose your teams and play!
Then, at night with a friend, sack out
at home on the lawn
to count the world’s first satellites—
maybe one or two or three, at most, all night —
before they swam the skies
like schools of fish or cars
on highways through the stars.
We did not realize then
that we were watching the end of skies
that matched what all the eyes
of all the men and women and boys and girls on earth
gazed upon a thousand years ago.
—
That time was passing
and soon would never be again.
The sky became a parking lot.
So did the field we played upon,
and the school now has guarded gates
and metal detectors at the door,
and parents plan their children’s play,
and the kids spend evenings staring at 9-inch screens,
huddled on a couch,
barely aware of the stars
10,000 years of people watched at night.