I cannot let the moment pass - Poem by Ivan Donn Carswell

I cannot let the moment pass without a weary greeting,
or retard the recent past where shadows still are fleeting,
I’d sabotage the future by just staring in a mirror
and never let the glimmer pass and try to hold my image fast
in healing my dilemma. Time is gliding in array, I sense it move
in subtle ways, tells me I am locked in stride and shocked
and numb and riven dumb inside the house I used to try
with no success to eulogise – and frankly I am not surprised.
I’ve cast the best of words into the endless thankless void
and listened long and patiently to hear what might be heard,
and garnered dust and loneliness in chilling, cogent quiet,
a crystal quiet of purest form, a chaste and potent curling worm
that nestles in my ageing heart. I must have died and blown away,
my hopes are dust in disarray, of dreamlike clouds, of coloured sand,
that waft and spin in thinning strands and wallow in a foetid band
to spread across this lonely land.
Where are the people we once knew who talked with us as one,
where are their children growing up and playing in the sun,
where are the words we shared of sane and peaceful unity?
Have they all died and blown away and disappeared like me?
© I.D. Carswell