You might as well befriend the moon— embrace her clouded peekaboos. And music…
Receive the tune— no time to choose— alone in a crowd or no one in view. And a smell…
Wafts past your nose— what was that? Or who?
Perfume on skin or a place that you knew.
Pause.
No need to wonder— you know who that was— and who you are as nostalgia winds the second hand round.
“Time is a straight line,” said he. “It moves consecutively, watches as it goes behind and below, like walking a path that winds into— well— no one knows.”
“No one knows, that’s right,” said she. “Simply put, I do agree. But there’s no line to speak of. Time bends—not like a knee— more like a finger touching its thumb or a rainbow finding its spherical end and answering with a gentle, Come.”
Time returns to the places we’ve been.
One says, “That memory is far.” Another, “The moment is here.”
Yesterday can be set down, but the nows of that day rise from the ground without notice or sound—
to delight or confound— it depends on the seconds into which they were bound.
Moments become recollections. Recollections, seeds with a life of their own.
Promises and hope, gentleness and rage, a touch, a glance, a well-appointed room or a half-written page—
all sown into skin, finding rest in smiles and tears, repose and toil, love and loss, freedom and cost, and the way sunlight lay across the earth at the end or when it all began.
“That was back then,” said he. “That is today,” said she.
The minutes listened.
“There is wisdom in both.”
Time smiled— crouched, quiet— behind an autumn tree, waiting for the final leaf to fall.
Iris Lennox 