The Last of His Time

Today, while pacing the route of a rubber track

I, in my lonesome, discovered the wind and the trees

Dancing in the bristling and speckled sunlight.

As I feared the fire of the sun on my fair skin

And wandered idly through my melancholy mind,

I gazed up and found myself the audience

To a dying man.

This man, whose skin and bone

Were withered and diffused,

And whose gnarled face gazed back at me

With blank and white eyes,

As he lay on blankets of fluffy, plush cotton,

Humbled me with his size as he floated

Through the sky.

He said little, just hushed whispers as the air brushed against

The leaves, but I listened to his cryptic stories

Of the times before the wind and sky and human life.

And the man gazed down at me

With no irritation or disdain

As he felt no pain, and I wished he’d stay if only so that

I may return his time.

This man’s ribs were apparent against the robin blue,

And as I watched him in his final moments,

As the wind urged him to make peace,

And with his last sighing breath,

The man pushed a gust of cold, bitter wind

That carried away his bones and his bed sheets.

And I, even more alone than before,

Mourned his death as his one sole witness.

Later that day,

The sky let forth a burst of rain that drenched the earth,

And I wondered if perhaps the sky too,

Wept for the dead man who had given me tenderly

The last of his time.