Like a tree perched on the high stony
Cliffs overlooking the grey sea
He stood there always:  a wooden, immovable symbol
Ageless as the rock itself.  It was
His job to keep the time -- not time
Present like a watch, but time past.
Memory like the pages of a history book.
Ears that had heard the first shot of the Great War.
Eyes that had seen the fury of the mushroom tempest.
But a keeper of time is still subject to time,
And the rigid wood warped
And the lone tree toppled.
But time never ends, and from the barren rock
Sprang another soldier, another sentry of time.
He weathers the stone outcropping as
Well as his father ever did.
Now the memory is his, and he guards
The agonies of the wars of Asia
And the triumphs of the wholeness of Europe.
Sometimes I like to go there, to sit beneath
The cool shade of the lone tree on that high cliff,
And I wonder when the time will come
When I, too, must root there.