Reflections on Father’s Day

It struck me during a moment of repose,
reclining with friends on the Mission lawn,
measuring our lives in a pile of old photos:

Time hurries by while we look the other way.
We sense the hours float past, move with the current of the day,
drift into the wide delta of sleep

and start all over the next day,
snapping a few pictures to mark our passage,
give to our fathers, and eulogize the dead.

My, how time flies, we’re fond of saying,
continually alarmed by our ignorance,
like a fish surprised by its wetness.

If time is a river then I’m drowning in bewilderment!
I see the patina of years reflecting off the church walls,
echoing the laughter of children nearby.

I sense the sands of time trickling through my fingers,
my own youth a mirage in the tinted distance,
and I realize that our essence is eternal.

Time is a cloak that we wear,
an ill-fitting garment
that scratches and tugs at our true nature.

Don’t ask me what it means or why it is so.
I’m here to watch the roses grow
not get lost in cosmic conjecture,

to see boys spring up as men
and girls blossom into women.
Perhaps that’s the lure of these photos:

we have learned to trick time,
one frame at a time:
capturing a moment of laughter,

commemorating a rite of passage
or preserving an ancient monument so one day
we can relive the moments we’ve lost.

But there’s no time for remorse.
The current keeps pulling. The rapids are just ahead.
I’ll bob on for a spell,

go with the flow, until it’s my turn
to sink to the bottom, embody the sediment,
inhabit the strata of dreams.