Half the friends I had, where long, long dead

I have not forgotten time,
when the hands of the clock drag me under,
pulling me down to shopping carts and 55 gallon drums
looking up at a broken yoke sun, I know
the iron gate of time, so go and float
down the river w/ old friends, count the bodies
that wash up on the red shale banks and wait for
the currents to bend in to back eddies, an
endless circling of dawn's joy like new born minutes
you count the cloudless sky a blessing
still you move down the folded water
toward the lake, toward the sea, with the
intuition of salt, as a sleepy mind begins
wondering how you got so far out, now
that the mile marker is in sight, it is a
bleak suggestion that to return, the swim will be a fight
find some thing, find it because it is lost and the carp will
eat it and grow monstrous w/ scales made of copper
and eyes of fire that see the globe of time descending
(the thing lost to every one on this river)
and when you come to the rocky beach at last,
the fish that had the golden ball will be only
bones buried in sand.