In the Pockets of My Days

In the days when I was shining and
soft curls were blooming — there was rumbling
and tumbling, bruises and bliss
I was bigger eyes and careless ears.

I held my days in my pocket.
alongside my browned penny,
my lint-laden cherry candy,
a clump of dried dirt.

Tender trophies collected while
I splashed and squished and squirmed
through ruts and runs, paths and places
mottled by mud and grass and tree bark.

My minutes unconsidered, when every day was a summer solstice.
I rumbled on, past ponds
greened and thickened, laughing

at the tail wriggling and green algae nibbling
of pollywogs, their budding alien appendages
bringing with them the nimble killer,
now only seeking the red and the flesh.

I too wriggled and nibbled forgetting
the dirt clumps and tree bark
of my chewy candy childhood. my own alien appendages budding,

along with the nimble, velvet violence of young men. Now there was only the pursuit of the red and the flesh. And my days bode their time, plotting in my pocket.
Teeth grinding into fabric, fangs forging their freedom.

Sometime between a tight-lipped first kiss
and payments sent to someone, somewhere
for a very important something, the gnawing in my pocket bore its insidious fruit.

My days slipped away, no longer company
for my faded pocket trophies - cherry candies, linted, browned penny dust wisps of vanished wishes.

My days now fugitive, fading and elusive
lost along the paths of my life where
someone will find me in my own dust wisp,
bound forever in its brown.

Now I am bigger, dulled and hard-haired, with
smaller eyes and sharpened ears,
I squint, seeking splashes and mud,
missing them in my clean, dry darkness.

Pocketed

in the pockets of my days.

Now my day carries me to duties and tangles unpleasant to the touch. To lunch meetings with no cherry lint-candy. To traffic and tasks and turns and horns.

I dream, smell the honeysuckle, bite the flower base,
feel the honey mist, a whisper on my tongue —
I scramble up soft supple material
to get a glimpse of play,

but the day sweeps me back into its pocket
with the day’s lesser trophies;
Shiny coins, keys to locks known and unknown,
the bigger important trophies.

Tomorrow I will get out of pocket
I will emerge with softer curls and bigger eyes, no longer carried by my days
in a clean pocket of coins and payments.

I will hunt the cherry, linted candy and clumpy dirt
I will rumble again and splash in my mud. I will seek ponds and pollywogs. I will be shining again tomorrow.