Poem #10 for Fall, 2015, Creative Writing

                        Life and Words

Old friends sit on the park bench like bookends
Visages jaded with words—faces crumpled newspapers
Below each stark, shadowy brim.
As I watch them, I think—how strange to be seventy
When time passes, that perpetual pendulum
Nearing closer and closer to sunset.

A leaf flutters, falls—the fiery park ablaze, a forest of sunset
The old men shrouded in overcoats—books to bookends
Words blur and focus between them. I hear the pendulum
Of their conversation as each gesture toward the newspaper
Between them. The sounds of the city, seventy
Horns going off at once, a cacophony filled to the brim

Can you imagine us, years from today—life full, up to the brim
Winter companions huddled together at sunset
I can’t imagine—how terribly strange to be seventy!
Conversation frozen between friends; between bookends
And what will they say in my obituary in the newspaper
When time finally catches up to me and the pendulum

Stops swinging. That perpetual pendulum
Is only perpetual for who? For G-d, I guess. And the brim
Of my hat will shield my face from the inevitable death in the newspaper.
Now, sounds of the city drift through trees, settling like dust at sunset
On the hunched shoulders of the old friends, sitting like bookends
Peacefully. Sharing, quietly—no need to talk. Seventy

Years or more, between them— that's seventy
Times 525,600 minutes. A pendulum
Unceasing, so far. Will words fill the yearning gap between my bookends?
Soft ones—or jabbing ones—harsh ones—uplifting ones—up to the brim
Until no more can be crammed in before sunset?
Life, to me, is a fleeting newspaper

A brief coverage of events, swiftly growing more crumpled. A newspaper
Filled with stories, each unique—but similar. Seventy
Or more stories, tragedies, disasters, but heroes too. And the weather at sunset.
What will it be like when my time comes, and my pendulum
Is no longer perpetual; rather halted at the brim
Of my now-filled, teetering shelf, precarious books held fast by bookends?

“He was a most peculiar man” reports the newspaper, ominously ticking, a pendulum—
“Died at seventy, found dead in his bath, filled up to the brim.”
I suppose sunset is both winsome and wistful—A beginning and an end. Bookends.

(inspired by and loosely based on a Simon and Garfunkel song)

                                                                         --by Meira Nagel