When did the sand in the hour glass cease to be my benefactor,

blessing me with bounties, boons made by simply me becoming me,

balanced by the running out of time?

A first truth about life, discovered but unsought

at the fruition of the long exploration of my tiny neighborhood;

Or that heart-beating moment of adventure

in my first solitary, J.C. Higgins-3 Speed journey

miles beyond the borders of home and Mothers watchful, worried eyes;

A first conclusion drawn about my self from my own, rough analysis

of “the stuff” that simply “happens” to me,

unqualified at the time as I might be to make it;

That first touch of lips with that beauty, far away from just next door;

The first tear to burn my cheek;

My first pummeling victory over some previously invincible foe,

(both of us all of 8 years old) ;

The death of my K-9 pal since both of us were puppies,

he then aged into gray jowls and painful growls

as he struggled from his blanket bed in the corner of my room

just to be with me.

Suddenly, it seems, he was unable to plow through

the chest-deep-snow woods,

me calling him to heel for the long back-track-walk

to home and soup for my supper,

he beneath my table with his tasty dog-dish-meal.

When did sand mark that moment for me

between “I can!” and “I can’t, any more”,

between beginning and ending.

That unnoticed, sudden second when

there is one sand grain less in the top glass but one more in the bottom?

When, that moment, when sand ceases to be the giver and begins to be the thief?

One inexorable grain after grain slips away without the hoped for relief

of even a momentary pause in its flow.

I can see it falling, though!

Know its coming and its cause.

Till there’s nothing more of day light

but the dark.