Perhaps time is our invention To make things seem to move Like the uncovering tail of the blue jay As it lights its feet on the wet Trembling wood.

Perhaps the seasons are really not More than a single space with walls inside, disconnected While fall and winter, and spring Which we always anticipate, are only Expansions of our own longings.

Perhaps there is only the now Neither age nor youth, not even the vertigo of memories stilettoed Except wounded into this present second Shorter than the birth of a cell, or the nest dropped With the sun and the rain always out together.

This center is absolute, it needs no endlessness For heaven or hell. Or for creation, our own illusion of ourselves. The minor variations we unfold are all the same Inherently permutating at once Repeating one design. Obscure. Lit at the edges of our time.