Experience

Wrinkles rise, weary, etched upon the skin,
as age gathers quietly, like waves upon the sea,
each arriving, tireless, upon the other,
each fading, extinguished, into the heart’s dark.
Desires swell full in the hidden abyss,
though I never thought of the depth’s own hunger;
the vastness of waves grows within,
clutching heaps of distortions, shadows of being.
In the chasm flashes unknown lightning,
erasing forever the road of eternal life;
and if once you rise, you must one day fall,
for the mind’s wide world vanishes in an instant.
Wrinkles deepen, bold upon the face of time—
signs of experience carved by life’s passage;
and death itself becomes the final application,
the last enactment of experience.