Minute Waltz

Oh time ebbs like tides, slips away.
Waves of minutes, hours leave the shore,
and years elude my reach. I need to stay

within the comfort of a memory. The core
of past is safety's blanket. Dream gives
warmth to my cold night, beckons, but before

I know it, morning rings again. What lives
is daily frailty rushing to a momentary need,
a trivia of here and now drifted through sieves

of must and should. Flowers opportuning, seed
blown like happenstance. Unnoticed. In my bed
I dream oceans of what could be were I but freed

from vast responsibilities. Is this bred
in my questions alone, my heart unique
in its unending lonely drive? When I am dead,

quiet will offer nothing more to seek
but reigning peace, eternity, no rushing day
lost to something I can't touch, oblique
no more. Secure. Lingering beyond the fray.