Written for:  Poetic Asides #417 – Write a complicit poem.  For those who are unsure, complicit is an adjective that basically defines a person who helps commit a crime or some other form of bad activity.

Forty years crept
by, as seasons flowed
one into the other,
his body once taut
now wrought with time’s
cruelty. Young man
of Spring promise
now old man of Winter’s
white wear. He despairs
of ever being a free man.
Who can he blame
for his shame
of imprisonment? Not
his partner in crime
to whom time was kinder.
What purpose would it
have served to turn
in his accomplice
and best friend. At least
in the end, one of them
had a life.