Day By Day

by Ari Mulgay

There’s too much to take in,
though it all seems the same.
The tall man on the 7:52 bus
who’s always headed home as you leave,
or the birds outside, which
sometimes sing
and sometimes fly south.
But you can’t notice it all.
It’s routine.

And so
day by day
nothing changes.
Each clinging on to the next,
tediously crawling towards something, or not.
And then suddenly, one day
you look back.
The birds have come and gone,
come and gone;
the same ones probably dead.

The man is old now,
and weak.
And you’re old too.
Aged by your incessant anticipation
for the day that’s not the same.
Day by day
you wait,
but nothing ever changes
until it’s too late.