It's a curious fact
with the passing of time
That the walls of a town
grow decrepit with grime
Their fierce aspect mellowed
by creepers and vines
The stone slowly broken
by ice and by slime;
That the walls of a house
only grow less secure
Adding leaks, cracks, and creaks
with each winter endured.
But taller and stronger,
more cunningly set,
Sealing narrower ways
from the pull of regret
With custom piled higher
to shut out the new
With gates locked precisely
in frames set more true
More crafty, more certain, more hidden,
less kind:
With each dawn grow closer
the walls of the mind.
Daniel M. Dobkin