^{_{This photo was taken for the Green Office’s Autumn Photography Competition, on the theme: Decay, which took place between the months of October-November 2022.}}

A poem on the passage of time and decay of the material. Can knowledge be eternal when everything/everyone is finite matter?

There is a man between the pages

sitting at a corner near the station,

with books and newspapers piled high,

pleasantly awry, one for the ages.

A Sunday paper on his lap,

and thousands more stacked up away:

Encyclopedias, prints, records, a map;

He guards this infinite knowledge-cave.

He lives above his precious finds

And nurses his potted plants, all shades of green

Because although his collections seem eternal

They will never all be seen.

As cracked glass and shredded blinds

Wither and worsen with every season,

the man between the pages submits to every mutation

His hair goes greyer and beard grows longer

Because even though his cavern had gathered

the past, the present, and the future,

He has aged just the same as his paper neighbors

a pray to decay, his existence in a blur.

There was a man between the pages

sat at a corner across the station,

with books and newspapers piled high

pleasantly awry, one for the ages