Too Late

The golden light falls upon concrete
like silk in air or angels’ hair painfully
trapped in a simulation of forever.
I think of faces–sweaty, round faces–gleaming,
and I miss them so much even though I have been nothing
but a rock on a roadside peeking from a cloud
of dust. How could one love this much
and be so helpless? We turn their smiles
over and over in our heads as if we can squeeze out
their juice and sustain us, as we trudge along
this desert in a rickety chair. And the golden
light descends a microsecond still, steals
the day away and whispers to the trees to shed
their leaves and break their bark and snap
their branches as the ground gets buried in an unbearable
heap of decay. We lay there watching the new flowers.
But we’re not part of it. We have been secluded
from this renewal because realizations by
their very nature are always too late
and our luck is running out.