Time goes back without you.
It is interested in what all that going forward meant.
It finds the two of you—you and her—there you are,
Looking as you were. The lake. The trees. The cemetery’s descent.
The two of you walk slowly. It’s almost time for the moon
To rise. Talk. Kissing. Talk. More kissing, soon.
The rise, a joke or two, the lake, brown, and small,
More like a pond. Time hardly remembers it at all.
Time gets back, and tells you all that was seen.
“This is what I saw.”
You listen in awe;
Time seeing what it once saw: what does it mean?
“The sun was setting, but you could see and smell the green.”
Time had been there, had really gone back. You feast
On what he says. “Did she love me? How did she look?”
But he speaks of her the least.
He seems to be remembering the past from a book,
Or worse, only from memory, and the pain it took,
And soon you lose patience. “What did you want me to do?”
Time asks. “She was there. But not really with you.”
And that was it. It really is what you fear. It’s true.
Time is kind before, not after. Life does not belong to you.