The time that passes, like a heart,
ticks on, clicks on with pulsing beat,
and with the future in retreat,
returns our spirits to the start,
reborn; we open up our eyes
and see tomorrow and the past
entwined;
the shadows that we cast
today will fall on ancient skies
and too, on stars not named
as yet—             as distant as
new stars can get
from where the human world
was framed—
All this, because we know, we care
we love and hold deep in our souls
the faintest embers, banked like coals,
of sensing, taking all we share
in lineage, in land, in ties:
ancestry, marriage,
friendship, bonds—in every gene pool
and its ponds,   in seas of learning,
truth and lies—
The last imagined second’s hum,
in passing, will remind us all
that only love
makes evening fall
and makes another morning come . . .