FUTURESHOCK

I don’t know whether it’s an over-sixties thing or whether these moments come to us all, whatever our age, but that fragment of a second, on waking in the night, when the veil of denial slips and the spectre of one’s ultimate end assumes a dreadful tangibility, is a sobering moment indeed.

MARCHING, MARCHING
 
It wakes you in the night sometimes,
that feeling:
time escaping, spilling out,
and you can’t seem to stop it.

You lie there breathing in
night air, sipping a cocktail mix
of doubt, regret, remorse,
a bitter acid-twist of fear

and seem to hear wind change track,
the future, not prepared to wait,
come marching, marching
to your gate.