The Hourglass

However many thousand-thousand grains of sand may lie
in glass above as time to come, or beneath as time gone by,
still in this trickling instant only one may tumble past
the narrow neck of now that is the soul of the Hourglass.

This fragile moment funnels the to be into has been
through an is that is too slender for all but the slimmest when.
I wish sometimes, when time is thin, the barrier might collapse
so that the years to love you in might hurry down en masse.

But flowing seconds filter by--some beige, some black, some gold--
enough to run your fingers through; far too many to hold.
And, blessedly, now stems the flow that else would far surpass
the breath and life with which I hold time briefly in my grasp.

Let moments, then, fall one by one until the very last
has tumbled singly, subtly through the soul of the Hourglass.