How to Measure Time {a #poem}

I swerved around a swallowtail today,

its goldblackblue mosaic translated

across the glass and gone.

Street’s curbed outline caught the corner of

my eye as the colorburst startled me to

noticing, awakened me to a sight just past

the neighbors.

A sudden glimpse of canines at their master’s

feet—heads anon, ears aperk—then they rose

and trotted on.

*****

What if darting visions, experience, growth

were not an arrow whizzing by in time but

instead layers that land over our lives

like a blanket? What might we make of it,

the mundane atop daysweeksmonths of

richness?

Years folding slowly, one event or view at a

time—like the memory of a butterfly’s sighting—

landing, not leaving, laying the bedrock on

which we build our days.

*****

This poem (the first I’ve written in a l o n g time) was inspired by one of Malcolm Guite’s recent “Spell in the Library” series speaking of time being, not a straight line shooting by as we watch from the sidelines, but more like the layers of a blanket, one over the other, building in time.

 

Sharing is caring!