“How We Live Now”

                     May 2020

Occasionally, we stretch time
so thin it can forget to fly,
and morphs into a landscape
of far stars, a map of boundless
hope or endless sighs.

Occasionally, we sketch rhyme
into the days where we reside—
echoes of congruence, reminders
of how other creatures teach us
how to listen can become to glisten.

Occasionally, we catch the sublime
from the corner of an eye, turn
to watch, forgetting, for an instant,
we’ve latched ourselves to
some presumably essential task.

Occasionally, we patch a line
onto a poem the way a skater
adds an extra leap over
the ice, because the music
told her it was right.

Occasionally, we etch a design
that may have clambered out
of the Divine and wedged itself
into some uncluttered edge
of the heart’s mind, waiting
till we reached for it, in time.