i left in search of myself,
walking an hourglass beach of sand
fine as a persian silk, white
as the spray of the sea
being thrown against a full-moon sky

i came upon a story-telling
(i no stranger to the tale,
it being mine, and i doing the telling)--
for the hourglass had broke,
melting the hemispheres,
smelting the three distinguished sands,
of up, coming down, and down,
and all their latitudes and longitudes,
into a single ore of frozen time

here i was: a huddled mass,
evolving, stratified polaroids:
of the cradle, the grave,
and all thereabouts in between,

all in a ring of converse, one with another,
striking memories and tales together
like a caveman's flint and stone
sparking a fire within our soul,
birthing itself by the breath of life
a being, weary of eternity

one voice above the others rose
not by force, but by gravity, like a stream
that with time grows into a mighty ocean
too big even for the hands of its god to contain

then was i altogether seperate, otherly:
when hearing this voice, coming
from lips for which no memories yet exist
and to whom i was a stranger still

an elder me, an ancient one,
who stood aloof from the mass
speaking words ripe with age,
with the ache to be spoken, and heard,
of a great many things, but really just these few:
of birth, death, and the great search in between