Goodbye to Certainty

Time is frozen in the silence of certainty.

Paved streets walled by concrete walkways.

I find myself lost in the sameness I see,

As shoe thumps guide me through the maze.

The houses are walled worlds of time where

The now moves slower than outside where

The metal donkeys bray on stone streets where

The now runs like rapids down to the sea.

The morning is quiet, and the wind is slow.

The trees guard their patches of grass and clover.

They watch me walk by, and then they go

Back to growing slow, over and over and over.

I nod to them. I see them dance in the breeze.

Squirrels live up there in the leaves.

They monitor my passing as they glide with ease

over tightrope branches to skitter onto eaves.

The urban world of rocks, and metal - and certain

Schedules and weekly planners - seems now

An illusion of certainty, a way to entertain

Our minds with our own power over the flow.

My feet carry me past the graveyard on B.

Their homes are still, wooden boxes beneath.

Their now is always, unchanging and free

Of doubt. For nothing is certain like death.