the ravage of time

once smooth, newly pressed, like sheets

and pillowcases, underwear and white shirts

in the old days, when  Mom stayed home and ironed.

those days, long gone, smooth gone to wrinkled,

cracked, featureless now populated with 

variety and character like this road,

these shoes that have trekked Nepal,

strolled green pastures, jumped between

boulders while wandering up drainage ditches 

now filled with rock and sand, the water

rising now in eastern fields, its time now

to shake the wrinkles from the freshly washed

sheets and let them ride in the wind and sun,

so smooth before settling beneath our

old bones.