Of Aging Faces Poem by jim hogg

I pictured vast arrangements in
the depths beyond this planet's sky
I saw the multitude of things
that hurtle, spin, begin and die;

an infinite parade of flames,
and frozen oceans without end,
that break imagination's frames,
and more than just one universe.

"There's no such thing as time" I said
Things happen and we play our part
upon the ever flowing edge,
this present where we always are.

I'm waiting there as if I know
exactly why I watch the sky.
A glimpse of something long ago,
a pointless truth, or crucial lie?

Or moistened lips, or ancient ship
adrift across a sea of stars;
a single ghost or well worn clip
of footage from the way things are?

A surfer on that moving wave
I might have scribbled on some wall
or, flickering vague within some cave,
I might have heard a seabird call:

tomorrow's song, or yesterday's?
I find I can't quite work out which,
within this stream of changing shapes -
the things I used to fear were fixed.

The future and the past, at last,
begin suspiciously to look
too much alike; too ruined, dark
and worlds away from every book

I ever read when I was keen
to master all the arts of life.
Like vague and inconclusive scenes
in photos shot on moonless nights

there's nothing to be seen except
the very things we choose to see
beyond the outlines starlight left
of aging faces and the sea.