After José Emilio Pacheco,
‘No me preguntes cómo pasa el tiempo.’
I can’t feel Time pulling the earth;
the plates from last night’s dinner
seem intact — on the table,
the sugar still dissolving in a cup of tea.
I don’t feel Time walking
with the rush-hour crowd,
stepping on my feet, waiting
for an opening to get
past me.
Time doesn’t hit like a drum,
or twelve soft-belled sounds,
it’s not short nor long Morse code,
Time’s a junkyard gypsy
trying to puzzle our fates together.
Perhaps in an ill-gotten epiphany
the Future is Time’s taciturn muse,
whispering chance into his ear, a voice
that turns into a steady heartbeat.
I don’t believe I’ll ever quite
feel it passing by me,
like night cars on the side of the road,
moving among my past lives,
a light that has already been spent,
a house of spirits behind the fog.
This poem appears in the September issue of Deseret Magazine. Learn more about how to subscribe.