On time

A two poem collection on our capacity.

This may not be what you’ve normally read of me, but I’ve written poetry for as long as I can remember. Some of it has been published; most of it is lost to spoken word lounges, notebooks, and the irretrievable corners of the internet. It’s often about time. I write my most honest poetry when I can breathe and hear the tick of the clock.

I’ve tried to summon that power of will to slow down these last few months.¹ These two poems, “Heritage, an entreaty to repose”² and “a consideration of flora, or the curious case of perspective” reflect that.

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i. Heritage, an entreaty to repose

  I saw what my ancestors saw

last night,

  just after we laid the kids down

to sleep.


  A cloudless sky - so clear; the pale

moon - light

  casts shadows of crepes down upon

my feet.


  I once said a prayer on a night

Like this:

  That the Lord of my granddaddy 

keep us!                           


  Staring up at the black, speckled

abyss.

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ii. a consideration of flora, or the curious case of perspective

yesterday, I saw a man picking yellow

flowers in the roadside ditch - near the bike path.

it occurred to me as I drove past:


had he not stopped to appreciate their splendor,

I may have only seen weeds.

1. Even in the worst times, people have had to rest. It may not mean stopping altogether, but acknowledging that a fight against time is futile.

That does not mean we overindulge in leisure. Each of us has the ability to slow down, and to consider how we read or write, work or live. We can also decide what we can or cannot withstand. The input of time only records our moments of decision, until we have none left to make.

"We cannot be held responsible beyond our strength and means, since the resulting events are quite outside our control and, in fact, we have power over nothing except our own will; which is the basis upon which all rules concerning man’s duty must of necessity be founded.” - Michel de Montaigne, Essays, translated by J.M. Cohen.

2. To be read after the poem: The ancestors I’ve only known in lore might’ve dreamed of freedom. They may have called for Jim Crow’s end. They may have also been grateful, as they stared at the sky, for a moment of rest in the face of immoral law, gathering strength to confront it at dawn. I can’t know for sure. What I can do is breathe and consider, and then set back to work, praying that the force which kept our line to this point in history—one with more general liberty, but the same liberty of staring at the sky in rest—will continue to hold us close.