Guest Poet: Brad Rose

Arrow of Time

No one prepares you for this, certainly not at school,
but when you turn fifty,
the arrow of time reverses.
Everything spools backward:
your best deeds shrug undone,
echoes ricochet back into throats,
volcanoes bury their heads in sand.

In sifting sieves, the hours empty themselves,
their hour-glassed seconds, vacant Saharas.
Your memories become children,
infantilized at the mere thought of now.
Zeno halves the distance,
until next to nothing remains,
zero’s empty egg.

When, at last, you reach the gleaming bead of origin,
a tiny speck in the chromosomes of clocks,
you are nothing, again,
ciphered and concentric,
waiting for your fathers to be born,
your mothers to be loved,
waiting for something taut and true
to take slow, deliberate aim at you,
and with perfect point and pitch,

      release.

© Brad Rose 2011

Brad Rose's poetry and fiction have appeared in: Third Wednesday, Off the Coast, Barely South Review, San Pedro River Review. Tattoo Highway, Boston Literary Magazine, Imagination and Place, Right Hand Pointing, FutureCycle Poetry, Unfold, SleetMagagazine.com, Six Sentences, Fiction at Work, Monkeybicycle, Up and Under/QND Review, Getting Something Read, Espresso Stories, SMITH Magazine, SpokenWar, Pow Fast Flash Fiction, Six Little Things, Short, Fast and Deadly, Staccato, and Blink Ink.