There are few things more terrible than being lost in time.
I know this because I am lost
in my first word (daddy), in the feel
of the soft air after the thaw, in
the taste of sunny tomatoes.
I am trapped in a blade of grass
observed at lacrosse practice,
(green with gray dots towards the end, a bit ragged);
trapped in a boat cutting waves to the vineyard
under shivery blue skies and a pale eye-like sun.
I am caged by yesterday, eluded by tomorrow,
and now I can’t find my way to now.
This one second is always just around the corner—
winking and wagging a finger, mocking my
stumbling, mired in last night’s potato and leek soup.
The second I arrive, it will just have passed
leaving an empty room of computer monitors
or a backyard filled with trees between which that one shape
is forever twinkling, vanishing—
Please let me find my way to the surface, I
need the soft
air, I need to breathe.