Time has speeded up so much, songbirds
fall behind. Where is Snuffy Smith, and Nina
Gabaldin? Our whole seventh grade class?
They have been resurrected on Facebook;
they email with long autobiographies.
This moving away and return is too frantic
for my mind. It knows it can’t see
what’s coming so it wants plenty of time
to prepare. My body wants this red fleece
shirt to last forever. It calls that prayer.
My dear one’s body keeps making little flowers
of cells the doctor cuts away before they
turn nasty. Many bodies in old age go crazy
like this. Plus, too many people work
too hard and pick up McDonald’s hamburgers
on the way home. Their health is wrecked.
Others have no jobs, yet their alarm clocks
still go off in the morning. This is a worse
kind of speed, seen from a standstill.
The quiet moon is still slipping in and out
of its translucent dress, but secretly
backing away inches at a time, so we don’t
notice. It is dreaming of flying out of orbit.
Maybe I will witness this after I have come
through the fear and emerged into the whole
thing. Maybe what I thought was speed
will turn out to have been my own mind,
clumsily trying to funnel everything through
one narrow channel. If so, it is wearing me out,
inventing the word speed over and over.