Only, a poem (or only a poem?)

Only

Only time can walk through that door

into the overgrown jungles of your

gardened heart. Only light

can be hidden by light, and night

can only hide itself in night.

Give me your liana hand,

green as grasshoppers, green as Oz,

and wrap yourself around tomorrow.

Only time can find its way,

machete-hacking its path to cities

of emerald and gold. It sings

as it works, swinging, swinging,

to tunes from a tinny radio.

They made those in Japan, when I

was a kid. Time carried them all

off to China and my evenings

followed, swinging a baseball bat,

swinging for the fences, the hidden

night that waits above the lights.

Only time can catch that ball.

Stephen Brooke ©2013