clock
Sometimes it really upsets me—
the way the clock's hands keep moving,
even when I'm just sitting here
not doing anything at all,
not even thinking about anything except, right now, about that clock
and how it can't keep its hands still. Even in the dark I picture it, and all
its brother and sister clocks and watches, even sundials, all those compulsive timepieces
whose only purpose seems to be to hurry me out of this world.
driving west
Though the landscape subtly changes,
the mountains are marching in place.
The grasses take on the fading
yellows of the sun,
and cows with their sumptuous eyes
litter the fields as if they had grown there.
We have driven for hours
through bluing shadows,
as if the continent itself leaned west
and we had no choice but to follow the old ruts—
the wagons and horses, the iron snort
of a locomotive. We are the pioneers
of our own histories, drawn
to the horizon as if it waited just for us
the way the young are drawn
to the future, the old to the past.
time travel
Elizabeth would choose
The Middle Ages
when cathedrals grew
like stalagmites
out of hard ground,
and rainbows coalesced
to stained glass.
David would choose the 17th century.
He'd whisper in the ear
of Galileo about dark matter
and space explorers; he'd tell him
never mind The Church,
you're canonized in all the textbooks.
Rachel might pick the 19th century,
a country house like the ones in Jane Austen;
or a dacha perhaps, outside of Moscow,
despite the fierce cold,
not to mention the increasingly
angry peasants.
But I would simply choose May 1932 the moment I was born on the Grand Concourse.
I'd insinuate myself into the head
of that girl baby, living her life
all over again
but doing it right this time.