Sooner Or Later They Ask Me My Age

I give a different answer each time,
tell about how the horizon
creeps in on what used to be
the open-wide mouth of sky.
About the way time accelerates,
and clouds race, trailing
long hair into dusk.
I explain how years stretch
soft and sag like old jeans,
whole episodes lost in the pockets.
How the other day I found
a crab claw on the beach,
fresh enough ripped from the body
that the blues and tomato reds
were still alive and bright,
and I walked along tide's edge with it,
holding hands with death.

First published in The Poetry Society of South Carolina's 2009 Yearbook