(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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