Approaching Thirty (Lauds And Matins)

    Laconic tears or Botticelli's Venus
    holding the years
    like tresses
    in a wistful pose.

    Tenebrous youth accosted
    by callow Time
    bleeds the heart
    with spring aloes.
    No comfortable shibboleths
    to restrain the wriggling polyps
    in the skin or nestling hair.

    Gerundive in movement,
    each particled whimper
    of the clock surrounds
    a cloistered second
    poised about the bearded target.
    As far as you know, nothing unusual.

    A total of eight hundred months
    but grammar school sums,
    spiel & mileage
    to drift across a lifetime.
    At thirty, the best half of the potage
    is gruel hand drawn from
    the sabulous pot.