poem by Jim Mann

Artwork by David W. Reed III

THE SECRET

What secret lies hidden folded away in the palms of weather hands

Eye piecing straight ahead as if to ask why do you look this way

Fingers that once soft, now hard as broken slate

Reach out to share a message of time lost

Like a game of hide and seek

To find the hidden recesses of a mind weak with age

Yet with the knowledge of many generations

That have followed before into your tomorrow

But for now I hold the secret

A place where only I can hide

To recall a spent youth

Stamped in deep lines upon the face of time.