The year that I turned forty-nine years old <br />Started out as a simple day that began to stretch itself out, <br />Like a large, heavy grasshopper, fighting in a spiders web, <br />Until it lengthened itself Into the deepness of eternity itself, <br />And each month became another disorderly year <br />In a great vertiginous forest, of many-ringed trees <br />Continuously erupting and spreading out <br />The boundaries enlarging at a dizzying rate. <br />Previously years I recalled had whizzed by <br />To some unknown algorithm <br />In which every year past childhood went by more quickly, <br />The farther youth was left behind <br /> <br />But at the magical node of seven, seven times, <br />Some magical expansion began, <br />And many lifetimes were granted in the span of a single year: <br />Species evolved and devolved in my shadow <br />Civilizations rose and fell under my gaze <br />Fire and writing were discovered time and time again, <br />Each time I cooked or opened a book; <br />Whenever I took a walk somewhere, <br />Explorers found the shores of new continents <br />And a curious humanity swarmed Earth once again. <br /> <br />Man found god and then abandoned him, every stroke of the hour. <br />I had always heard seven was a mysterious, potent number. <br />If and when I reach 98, I feel sure infinity will begin in earnest <br />And in the extensive singularity of self, <br />I'll conquer time once and for all.<br /><br />Patti Masterman<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/forty-nine/
