Time is the changer of many things

Like a magician it transforms

But the trick is so subtle and slow

We have no way of knowing

Fathoming

how it is done

People we once loved terribly and lost

Become memories that no longer accost our senses in quite the same way

Pain that once twisted fiercely becomes muffled

Until like a candle wick snuffed

It is finally blown out

Sometimes the scent of burning lingers

Like white sage cleansing

But the keen sharp taste of blood in the mouth, the mind

Is gone

Time beguiles youth and gently stretches it forward

When we are young, years last forever

At the future we scoff

But then things speed up

Our brazen bodies catch up

And as the skin shrinks back into place

The bones no longer hold it in quite the same way

But a good life is graceful in repose

And so are faces that have smiled

Been brave

Lived deeply

They are saved the ravages that sourness and weak spines produce

Instead they grow more beautiful

And far more interesting as they age

Time is power

Erosion carved in rocks

Valleys forming

Mountains dropping

Planets spinning

Casting spells that the days fill

Over and over

As a billion tiny humans are born

Toppling

One after the other

Gone

Breathed into life

Dying to one another

And through it all

Time

Ticks on

Puzzling a question that remains unresolved

No matter how evolved

The Sunday sermon calls it

I had hiked straight upwards for an hour – look how high up I am – and then look at the grooves in the rock in the photo – the plaque tells me it was once a sea bed, this towering woodland was an inland ocean.

How can I not ponder time, transformation, we know nothing, we are nothing, we have been here but a millisecond in the great scheme of things.

How relaxing to realise that nature lasts forever, time is immortal, and we are anything but.

Top photo – same place, looking out over the gorge and national park – it was magical until an hour or so later I heard human voices around the bend and knew it was time to go down and find reality again.