It has been today for a very long time,
years and years,
one day longer than it has been yesterday,
a day more often than it has been tomorrow
which is on the verge but no guarantee.
I remember a Tuesday late in June, 1952,
bees in the hollyhocks,
the killdeer’s deer-deadly song,
fluff drifting white from the cottonwood trees,
and my father’s long leaning gait pushing
the reel-whizzing mower up and down the lawn.
Maybe it was a Wednesday.
It’s been 63 years since
the events of that long ago day.
Memory makes fiction of facts
and facts of fiction.
A faulty fact,
would that make fake a recollection?
The memory feels real
no matter what the facts.
Time is always moving, always still,
and now is never then,
even if a memory lasts beyond the sunset,
lasts beyond the always pending dawn.
The mayfly takes its time arriving
and a short time later to die,
like today, years in the making,
then gone at midnight
the very same and very next day.
In the Walmart party favor aisle
a little boy put a paper crown upon his head
and announced to his mother,
“I am the king of nothing.”
I smiled and whispered,
“So am I,”
then turned and pushed my cart down
the aisle of arrivals and departures,
past calendars and clocks.
2015