Five 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. “The world ends at 5 O’clock”. His voice rings. Tortured Nostradamus parables fluttered-by like migrating whooping Cranes. “I recall looking at my watch, and seeing only the sun turning around a scarab beetle. I asked a running man how he was timing his race? The runner was too busy counting to answer. I thought of the nursery rhyme, and the farmer’s wife and her carving knife; the blind mice running. My stone house was ticking like a Mayan calendar. My chair rocking back and forth like a metronome. That evening he left my mind empty, his face was just a clock in a Salvador Dali painting. Of course, I never knew he was dead, I just heard what they said.