Ever The Twain

This perpetual collapse of sand,  

here now tense radiate 

as the centrifugal arc 

of a sweeping second hand. 

An incessant cyclic swing of 

weighted pendulum, and  

the fluid mesh of gears 

within a well-weathered clock. 

This assurance of dread decay 

here deemed rote entropy. 

Dire disintegration, and yet 

time remains ever 

infinite. 

 

You stand at some river’s edge; 

there note how its volume varies, 

yet cannot deny its unfaltered fate. 

There at its lowest ebb—

arterial affluence be damned—

note how some soluble memory

has come to here settle as silt; 

subsumed ‘neath an alluvial constant. 

 

Indeed there upon the Nodaway River, 

I once tipped my toe in a time sublime.

The land upon which I here came to be 

lay directly adjacent this river, 

and thus I was here made ever aware 

that said time in its torpid tributary 

was herewith passing me by. 

 

I, here 

hayseed huckleberry, 

had this boyhood friend named “Jim” 

and we two twain swain 

there feigned to be 

river-boat captains fair. 

 

This was likely 1967, 

but what did we know 

of that sordid Summer of Love? 

Jim, I, and a certain Mark Twain, 

were hucksome Missouri boys, 

and therefore a million miles or so 

from that crotch-debauch 

sated Haight-Ashbury. 

They all flower-chile beguiled 

whilst we corn-fed and bacon bred. 

 

Indeed, my dad had assured 

that the only psychedelics 

I would ever experience 

was that part in The Wizard of Oz 

when black & white shifts to color, 

and fraught tiny-tots began to appear. 

 

Past Frank Baum’s aplomb, 

there’s no Ginsburg, no Burroughs, 

   no Jack-hack Kerouac. 

On this river, current time

skips a beat or two, or three, 

for here only Samuel Clemens 

calls forth his two-fathoms deep. 

A river boat float—one boy and 

one man on a raft and 

as ever the twain shall meet. 

That past and this present 

hence become tense, and in 

equal fate time gravitate. 

 

How old we once were, we become, 

once un-clung to young is done. 

We left alone upon liquid levitation. 

 

My father built us a raft: 

a solid wooden platform there

lashed atop sealed cylinders. 

Perhaps it does not occur  

that when traveling time 

one must remain buoyant 

lest one sink and one’s tenuous time 

there come to abruptly end. 

 

Accompanying us upon this 

surfeit o’ sodden eternity 

would be one of my dad’s 

faithful gun dogs.  

That and my best friend Jimmy. 

Jimmy was somewhat older than I 

yet at the same time special. 

Special in that though his lifetime 

was there longer than mine, 

we were of a maturity  

   one and the same. 

 

There leaving the River’s bank, 

we eased out into the current, i.e., 

that flow which sustained current time.

We were boys; we were men; 

we were dogs till our fluid fated end. 

And there, progressing down that river, 

those of us who were boys 

would with time come to 

lose our larksome footing 

and plunge deep into inky murk 

at a depth somewhat less mark twain. 

 

Given to gravitation—

thus prone to precipitation—

we’d plummet past tense and 

the dog would do so in kind. 

We three a splatter-waft from the raft. 

This a damp dally from which 

we’d in turn rally and 

frantically swim from some

self-inflicted past back to present. 

 

That raft a singularity of which 

a catfish there treading water beneath 

might come to ponder aquatic space 

and fluid time continuum. 

 

An hour or so later, nay lesser, 

nay feline-fish future tense, 

the raft pulls up to the river’s edge 

where a car awaits to ferry us home. 

A moment later, I pour forth 

through depleted hour glass

to stand upon a sandy bank 

and watch father push our raft

out and away, there 

back into the stream of time. 

 

And I herewith come to the realization 

that I’m suddenly all of 

sixty-five years in age. 

That that dog and my father

are both long gone. 

That Jimmy’s face is a lost recollection.  

That those once buoyant cylinders 

were ever predestined to rust. 

Indeed, there in this now, 

they are taking on water. 

That that raft of which 

only I would remain to 

sustain some sodden memory, 

has there sadly begun to sink. 

 

That all these temporal tributaries 

run to one and the same eternity. 

That I have come to a given gulf in time,  

and that all which remains is the 

urge to exhale and submerge. 

 

Ó 2023 Jack David Hubbell