Another Wrinkle in Time

he was, in all ways, carried by
the waves of time:
sailing on and on in his boat of skin;
he looked below,
and lo and behold,
creased blue ripples so akin
to the wrinkles his aged face brings
to the view of an average stranger.

it seems the clock had been malleable,
for time had stretched far and wide:
panic had gripped him, and its chiding had
struck him,
dumb and a little less than alive

a thunderstorm came, and the ocean was hideous
and rude, and cruel, and a lot more than vicious!
so his white hair grew paler
and his wrinkles sank deeper;
and he'd blown all the clock's hands backwards –
he cried,
"oh, time, confound you! wait just a little bit longer!"

and so the lightning gathered up all its power
and exploded into the morning
and painted the sky with vivacity and precision,
and seven different kinds of vibrance
and in all this beauty, he had not noticed
that his skin had raced to crumple
and his hair had rushed to whiten
and his fingers had ached to tremble
and that his soul was a little worn-out
and breaking along his body's cracks

but! his boat had come ashore
land and sand all by his lonesome, at last
and the castle of the alchemists once more,
just like how he'd dreamed in the past
he knocks with all the knocks his body can muster
and he finds the best of them, of all the alchemists
she asks,
"how can i help you, sir?"
and he says, all certain,
"Immortality, please."
and she nods, a sweet smile on her lips
– a flower, more than anything –
she asks,
"would you like peace with that?"

next is a flat kind of beeping,
like the calmest of tornadoes
and the quietest of hurricanes.
steady, steady, steady – right.

oh, god. it is the machinery that betrays him.