The Hourglass

(Kathleen,  Aug 2001)

It marks out time

Filtering those fragments of our lives

Squeezing them through that small space we occupy

A brief fleeting moment

Like so many grains of sand

Each different

And yet the same

Seen from a distance

Indistinguishable really

One from the other

Good bad beautiful ugly gay straight

Christian heathen black white

Rubbed and tossed in that hourglass of time

Sifted polished

Spiraling downward

Helpless in the fall

Dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return

Trickling away

Unable to stop the inevitable flow

Spilling on the bottom

One on top of one another

No hierarchies here

Kings and servants

Piled ignobly

Until the last grain has fallen

But then

The cruelest joke

We turn it round

To start again

Life trickles past us

Unawares

Sliding slipping whispering

Into eternity