Beans

There is a place
it’s full of beans
and it squeezes you gently
when you get in
it’s like a swimming pool
full of beans
it is a swimming pool full of beans

A metaphor is a four-letter
word that changes into another
four-letter word. There
is no other way to say it
than that one. Beans and
swimming pools and quicksand
pouring in from the top of
the hourglass. Time passes
without anyone meaning it to

There is a place toward
the meat of the poem where suddenly
it becomes apparent that
it’s really about what it’s
really about and not beans or
pools or hourglasses or metaphors

They drop away or unspool
and suddenly they become clear
stark as in stark naked
and there it is
                    the plain fact
that time plods on
in its way unceasingly
no matter
what you may think
no matter what
you may want to do instead
it keeps dripping
into the bedpan
of the past