Time

A balloon in the wind can feel no wind.
It drifts with the wind, in the still of the wind,
While houses and fields and trees pass by:
Thus do we drift with Time.

Babies are born, grow up, grow old,
Seasons pass, fashions change,
Old friends die, marriages fail,
As we drift in the grip of Time.

A fish in a stream has more power than we:
It can feel the stream, it can fight the currents,
Swim in place, go upstream or down.
But we just float in the flow of Time.

Whether Times flies, whether it drags,
We are equally helpless from birth to death.
As masters of Space, we manage the world:
But we're not even apprentices of Time.

—San Diego
7/28/2002