“For when words cease to cling close to things, kingdoms fall, empires wane and diminish.” – Ezra Pound

This week The Drifter offers a twenty-three-line poem because that’s what occurred – or arrived. In the unlikely event that anyone out there wants more “Drifter” today, I advise perusing this pome (not a typo) a multitude of times. This is not an article from The New York Daily Bullshit with a tag on it saying, “2 min read.” Reading this piece very, very, very, very, very, very, very slowly (aloud, or inside) is the recommended method – a form of medicine. I here predict (and if I’m wrong, I won’t know it, or care) that this one will be around for a while.

In the title, “Beauty” is a name, as in the old French legend, “Beauty and the Beast.”

This piece contains the past and the present, and has eyes on the future, in a writing where hundreds of things are deliberately hidden within every line.

And: age, does it not sneak up on us like a thief in the night?

With sincerity,

The Drifter

April 30, 2026 AD, 11:33 AM

The Heaven of Beauty

When I thought of your long red silver hair

and how many years it’s been that I haven’t seen it

blowing in the wind,

I was surprised, and almost shocked,

and I couldn’t believe that it was almost May again.

May,

month of dying

purple lilac petals in Berwyn,

another chance, a thawing of the heart, a re-resolution,

despite all.

May,

a sinking of the heart, a re-realization,

a too-real realization, and a knowing, that nothing,

like us, does not last forever.

And May,

telling me

there will be

another summer

of a different kind

Somewhere Else

somewhere down the line

one of these

lifetimes.

The Drifter