Standing Beside Time

I am a statue aging in the park –
stone so realistic that I contemplate
existence and madness at once

The simplicity brings me to a corner.
I am not the sister of beauty, nor her milk.
Measuring grain by grain the time of blue

I live only as the passing of time
on the bent knee of forgotten yesterdays
Look upon me, lest I be forgotten –

You can see that I bath the sky
in the white wing of dreams,
beside me in the stars –

Turning ages wash my words,
for they are as dust
and fleeting is this wind

Finding only the dew of wet lips
elevated from the seer of beseeched eyes
with cool understanding

And within I can feel nothing
more than cleanliness.
My words are a hooded stranger

Walking the trees of shadow,
they are sparks, maybe, or nothing as it were.
Do not forget!

Stepping through damp, fallen leaves
Shoes picking up clumps of detritus
And then dropping them again against
Slippery gray rocks, I seem transparent
To all around me, yet I feel more present
Then ever, as if a tourist hiding behind a camera,
My eyes polished, white, marble
Smoothed over by the years
Every day in passing is another lost
And still I wander in the dark looking
For something,
maybe the trail of crumbs will lead to
Hansel's House, and there I can take refuge
In a fairy tale.