PERMISSION

Colorado, October 2009. Photo by Josh Tilton. Copyright © Michael D. Warden. All rights reserved.

PERMISSION

I see you now

At long last

The one I only knew by happenstance

By chance moments, too fleeting

A glance in a mirror in a glass display

As my body is rushed on by throngs in frenzied worship

Of almighty time

Why did no one stop me?

Why did no one tell me the truth?

I had hardly time to grasp my fugitive soul

In such a flurried dissonant life

To find a diamond in a blizzard

To hear a song—such a song!—in a bloody field of cannons and screams

To think it has been years

Clawing, grasping, straining

For just one clean look

At the art I am

All that time