Separation

Time separates more widely, fatally

Than space.  The second that just passed goes, gone,

Leaps gone forever, plummets weightily,

More heavily than gravity’s hard, wan

Iron cannonball in vacuum, yanked fast

Away where science cannot find it, lost

Eternally and instantly.  The past,

Our pasts are irretrievable, hit, lost.

Sere continents, salt seas and oceans rend

Our lives apart, but these can be traversed.

No transport can commute us to past’s end

Of dark light years beyond. Time’s split is worst.

  Pacific waves and wrinkles on the sweep

    Of deserts fail.  Yesterday’s fall looms deep.

Phillip Whidden