5 O'Clock Shadows

When he died, no one told me. Why would they, I had not seen him in years? Yet that day, he kept walking in and out of my mind’s eye. I wondered why? “The world ends at 5 O’clock”. His voice rang in my ears. Two tortured Nostradamus parables fluttered-by like migrating Hooper Cranes. “I recall looking at my watch, and seeing only the sun turning around a scarab beetle. I remember asking a running man how he was timing his race? The runner was too busy running to answer. When I turned around to catch up with myself - I was gone” His words scurried through my head like white mice. I wondered why? Then I thought of the nursery rhyme, and the farmer’s wife and her carving knife; the blind mice running. The house was by now, ticking like a Mayan calendar. A dry terracotta ticking, without any glass cover to keep his voice from getting louder. "The world ends at 5 O’clock,” he repeated. I wondered about that some more, That evening he left my mind empty as if it had been a fortune telling booth he had rented for the day. I could not recall his name, and even his face was just a clock in a Salvador Dali painting. Of course, I never knew he was dead, I just heard what he said, and I wonder why?