I Wondered Why

When he died, no one told me, why would they, I had not seen him in years? Yet that day, he kept walking in and out of my mind’s eye. I wondered why? “The world ends at 5 O’clock.," his voice rang in my ears. Two tortured Nostradamus parables fluttered-by like migrating Hooper Cranes. I recall looking at my watch, and seeing only the sun turning around a scarab beetle. I remember asking a running man how he was timing his race? The runner was too busy counting to answer. His words scurried through my head like white mice. I wondered why? Then I thought of the nursery rhyme, and the farmer’s wife and her carving knife; the blind mice running. My stone house was ticking like a Mayan calendar. My chair rocking back and forth like a metronome. That evening he left my mind empty even his face was just a clock in a Salvador Dali painting. Of course, I never knew he was dead, I just heard what he said - and I wondered why?