(Jordan Graff/Unsplash)

Days are come when pleasure is become pain,

come winter short and passing and again

and then again count on sleep to end

their count—some quiet to attend

a stay in night. Gone in the hour, our lives

like kitchen arts, which are

like theater, the moment is the star,

half a memory being what survives.

Mark Kirby, retired after thirty-five years in cyberspace at the Social Security Administration, writes from his native Baltimore.

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Published in the November 2020 issue: View Contents
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