Time

The momentum of days carries me, a wind, a river, a dream. The blur of faces, colors, the warped music as we pass...

In the beginning, there was a gleeful agitation, an excitement, the sheer thrill of the ride. Later came the motion sickness, the drunken stumbling; the earth and its undulating surface feels impossible to cross, the crumbling edges, the random crevasse.

Finally, less beguiled by fear, I am a man, at night, on a train, smiling to himself, as the lights of the the city begin to slide.

Children seethe with envy. Imagination pervades their idea of things, of adult lives, of the possibilities in the world. Words--rife with the vagaries of meaning--run wild in their heads and bloat with the sugary soda that fuels them. Freedom is a reckless abandonment of the scrutiny of others; maturity is the reckless abandonment of the scrutiny of self. Their impatience for their lives belies their naivete of the weight of breathing. Life is more complex than having the keys for the car.

And youth is cruel and smiles at things which it cannot see. -TSEliot