There is a poem waiting to be written about Time
waiting like the rest of us in checkout lines
and holding pens, holding bellies full of hours
waiting to be born.

Water breaking, slipping through our hands as sparkling rain,
our lives written with sparklers in the air on the Fourth of July,
gone in an instant.
Seen once more, doubled in the window glass.

Doubled, twinned, symbiotes, we nibble at our years,
but Time eats us like watermelon, spits us out like seeds,
gets squashed beneath us in our chairs,
as air squeaks out from cushions.

Like bubbles wrung from laundry, the line
where we hang our pictures and past-due notices,
diplomas and dingy drawers, wet hankies and house keys

to beating time: Swim in the river, let it flow behind you,
clothes stripped before you dive,
shoes, caps, capes,

apron full of days. Flap it and they disappear,
but only as sugar dissolves
when it sweetens the cake,
sand when it fires into glass,
glass into obsidian. Into night.
Into poetry, waiting to be born.