A Note About Time
As you can see, I'm not a poet. I just liked these words, together.
A NOTE ABOUT TIME
It's October. It's December.
It's May again?
And I'm not sure of the year.
Time and time and time.
A nickel buys bread,
but there is no medicine
to stop mother's cries in the night.
A snowflake or a warm rain drop,
it makes no difference
to the windowpane.
How many breaths are there?
How many late nights spent listening to the radio,
or watching the news,
or devouring a documentary in a different living room
from the one I knew as a child?
A nickel is forgotten between the couch cushion.
And all the new injections
can't stop mom's cries in the night.
The barn door is stuck again;
grandfather puts on his galoshes and walks
so that the water for the cows doesn't freeze.
He's long gone, and, at this rate, I'm gone too.
But not before leaving this note about time.