Marsh Time

To age is but to respect gravity,
movement that is denial given up
in the fashion of prayer: on one’s knees
and thankful perhaps to finally pause.

Even the cockroach, large and hard-backed, slows
as if to attract the descending heel,
letting perpetual generation
care for itself in the shadowy corner.

The arthritic cypress has no age,
never having been young, its gnarled grip
sufficient, and its fall unwitnessed,
the swamp collecting all of its debts.

Robert Parham