Who is the Gatekeeper that guards the way, that deflects our questions with uncertain answers?

I think I can see the face of the Timekeeper in the window. He is slow or quick, but always visible. A long finger all the way through time. Your time is up. Time to move on. But to where? Is there anywhere to go from here or do we just vanish, like falling off a cliff into an abyss that dissolves us into nothing? Like lemmings, culling themselves for the future. Too many of us to survive fruitfully. Too many already suffering. Are we there? We are.

These are the questions, though we may not speak to them out loud. They are here, screaming from inside ourselves, though they cannot be heard. I will not end here. Not yet. The Timekeeper is silent. I am silent.

As we float through our private history and listen to the thoughts of the rose and the fern as they screech silently at each other, they wither on their way. It is good to talk with the dead or those about to be. To feed upon their wisdom. I am not dead. Not like the deathly creeping of the porcelain panther. Stalking as it glides toward the crystal horse with the broken leg. We too are the ornaments. Fragile and beautiful, about to dissolve from usefulness. Those eyes will never close, even though our destiny never intended for us to survive.

Looking from the side window of the highway coach, upon the spring melt that trickles, growing from melted snow, slithering like a snake in the gutters and ditches under the gold warm morning sun, I see the miracle. Then gone. Leaving forever to travel from beyond the sky to beneath the soil and on to the next welcome adventure.

Tell me the name of that river, that mountain and those other places that are beautiful, etched into the back country of memory, that will always remain. Too bad there is no hell to burn away in. Too bad there is no heaven.

I carried my lunchbox on my lap, with my belongings and orange juice and suddenly everything was perfect, because it was my face in the window. ‘I’ am the Timekeeper. ‘I’ am the Gatekeeper.