Time is like the wind That comes in the morning With a barely palpable caress of the cheek Rising to a comfortable caress In its measured passage of the day Until it rises a sudden gale Revealing the irrevocability of its power Trembling our browning leaves And blowing them to our finality.

The poem figures time as wind: initially gentle and almost imperceptible, then steadily strengthening as the day progresses, and finally becoming a sudden gale. This arc mirrors how life can feel—youth passing lightly, adulthood moving with a more noticeable pressure, and later years arriving with abrupt force and consequence. The “irrevocability of its power” stresses time’s one-way motion and the impossibility of reversal. The closing image of “browning leaves” evokes autumn and mortality: we are like leaves loosened by time’s gusts, shaken from our branches and carried toward “finality.” The tone is elegiac rather than panicked, emphasizing inevitability over drama.