Empire

He wore a little spiraled hat and wrote a song

that everyone sang. He lived on the mountainside

above a lake with a mythical beast he’d subdued.

A train circled the village each hour, over and over,

as he leaned down over the clock of   his world

where people were days becoming months and years.

In a park, from the hides of  ten cows, he’d constructed

a  giant ball that everyone touched until it became

a torn rag. He had no family, and because he worried

so much about them: What if, what if, what if, like another

beast pawing away, he’d invented a vitamin for everyone

old that allowed you to continue slowly to grow

until you forgot everything you once knew.