Pulley Physics

Life starts slow,
In millimeter-length flagella sprints
Mindless attempts of survival
And for all it’s worth-
A prolonged existence

A time when,
Everything was at stake
But with nothing to lose
Not a mother’s love,
Not a spouse’s kiss,
Not a daughter’s smile,
Not the calvary of thinking about the end
Nothing to lose,
but the possibility of everything

Life speeds up,
In cradle rocks and toddler hops,
In two-time humpty dumpty beats
In hopscotch skips and seesaw cycles
In trading names with lunchbox friends
Until our first major stumbles
Tumbling across weathered truths
and truths that we can’t handle

Life slows down,
In prom waltzes and ballet classes
In slow melodramatic pop ballads
In graceless heavy steps of moving out
In torpid tequila gulps
Until we’re swept at the edge,
Kicked naked into the hustles of living

Life speeds up,
In praise worthy typing speeds
In caffeine-induced cardiac arrhythmia
In calendar pages turned on the over morrow
In late-for-work drifts and drives
Until we feel sheathed
Until we can already see what our life’s jigsaw bares,
But the eyes,
the final one or two pieces
It longs as it stares

Until life slows down,
One with the speed of a creaky rocking chair,
In the slow descend of autumn leaves
In the snail-paced world here at the house of the aged
In the slow withdrawal of memory from the mind
In reminisced scores of younger years
And for all its worth,
A traumatically pleasant existence

Now I rock on my chair,
Nothing at stake,
but with everything to lose
I’ll lose my mother’s love,
I’ll forget the shape of my spouse’s kiss,
My daughter’s smile will fade
There was everything to lose
but the dread of not living

Whether I sleep beside my laureate crest
Or the piles and piles of unpaid debts,

Life ends slow,
In millimeter-per-second pulley physics
Between the casket and the hook
Between life and death
Between the slow rush at the beginning
And the slow surrender at the definite end

From the hands holding the lever,
Into the hands of the creator
And for all it’s worth,
a poem which took forever
to write,
to somehow feel,
one life,
one pulley reel