I raced raindrops
on my way back to the office
and in that moment,
I didn’t need to ask for anything.
I had all I needed.

Whatever prayers I repeat
on a loop in my heart
were on hold as I moved.

I’ve not yet told you of my interest in time.
I am not invested in its passing per se
but I love how leaves change in fall
and how trees grow and shed
branches and bits to keep growing.
I like seeing rivers and seas ebb and flow
with passing days and months.
Years are too large for me to wrap around-
you can say ten or 100 years
and I can only imagine through next week.
The Bible’s time doesn’t bother me
because it’s all too much to imagine
with my limitations anyway.
I don’t think about my age much
but I apply cream every day
to minimize the weariness I see.
I don’t worry about being late
but I love clocks and watches
and the act of noting the time,
as if the number means something mystical
or scientific when we are born or die.
I was born at 3:15 a.m. and I don’t know
if that affects anything else in my life-
I was also a month premature, so maybe
I’ve always been in a hurry.
Which is humorous now that I know
I’m not getting anywhere.
Except in my head, where I imagine
time as a back and forth proposition,
where I can go places and yet be safe,
be loved and love openly without remorse,
where I can watch rivers surge,
moon cycles spin, and my hand held
like there’s no tomorrow.

I am addicted to watch advertisements.
Closeups of gears, metal, lugs, and leather
call to me and descriptions of the art
of timepieces blow me away,harkening back
to when Ogilvy knew how to tell a story.

I feel an inexplicable connection to watches
so I stare, loving the faces, different styles,
the bits of history, the mechanics.
Time porn. I am addicted.

Like Charlie Chaplin trapped as a cog
but happily so, where time is irrelevant,
moving like a river -somewhere, anywhere –
the story of a watch feels luxurious
and the cadence of my breath changes
as I imagine being Rosalind Russell
sparring with Cary Grant, or a code breaker,
or someone with somewhere to go.

It’s a place we’ve not been,
a time we somehow inhabited though,
a remembrance of Perseids in October
while the leaves are changing, falling
well after the last of the frogs are asleep.

It’s a field we’ve talked about,
swishing grasses and sighs lost
to summer breezes and crow’s wings
as we move in a dance almost like flight,
a happy floating, stunning for the peace.

It’s a love without definition or boundaries,
the way sky and sea are all the same
with blues and nightfall imminent,
joyful as rain as meteors as our words
how they all fall and rest together.

I can trace the tops of the hills today,
mostly bare but shining, with spots of color,
red and yellow. They’re miles away.

Morning fog lifted over a curved path
allowing just enough of a glimpse
of what might be around the bend,
though I am in no hurry to get “there,”
as the path is a thing of beauty itself.

I can walk the same path hundreds of times
without being bored- there is just so much!

I see time passing in trees, smell seasons
in soil and leaves, feel the shift beneath
my feet as the world spins slowly.

I follow shadows of clouds as they touch
people walking nearby. I like the light today.