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