On the porch
late sun
highlights grey roots.
Time
a thawing river.
She waits,
five again
sitting on her schoolbag
wondering if she’s missed the bus.

“Delays are possible.”
She’d read the signs
took the detours
tried not to give way too often.
Forty and still under construction.
Outside her window
workman pour tarseal.
Ten again, clad in cape,
Wonderwoman
spying on the workmen.

She’d said “I do” and later didn’t.
Dream home for sale
packing books,
they’d read the final chapter.
Twenty again
shifting apartments.

She’s traveled with the weather.
Depressions, highs,
cold fronts, warm hands,
to find herself between the
lines of poetry
and not the sheets.
Thirty again,
big hair and shoulder pads
she gets Princess Di.

He’s fifty one, room 508.
Communication whiz,
his money talks to strangers.
They’re reading the future,
full stops in the gaps
pauses in a five year sentence.

She’s forty.
Eyes like rising suns,
beam through wrinkled rays,
a well pressed smile.
No page turner in the bargain bin,
she’s heading for the top.