Sixty Grains of Sand

Though it may seem endless,
one must look at its actual swiftness.
Those who have lived to fifty join sixty generations before, stretching back through the last three thousand years.

Sixty—
not countless, not infinite,
just a threadbare line of lives lived and lost, a delicate chain linking the present to echoes of the ancient past.

As we look back, the past has flickered like an instant spark. Passages flee at moments end with no space between.

Our years, like theirs, are grains of sand, not spilling endlessly,
but measured in quiet handfuls,
slipping steadily toward the end.

Will we stand as their whispers,
etched into the stones of memory,
or fade like dew beneath the sun,
forgotten by the sixty yet soon to come.