“Nothing can be lost by taking time.”

– Abraham Lincoln

 

Time is nothingness

and this should allow

me to take any transport

 

I want. And I will not

hurry in hot haste nor

will I look to time

 

as a challenger,

or to you who rushed

to that train

 

thinking you were late.

The moon was falling,

tripping over your bags,

 

and I was wanting

to say you were not late,

that the train would come

 

again and again

like a dream of falling,

like a star

 

fish regrowing its arms.

And my arms and time

are nothingness and that

 

should allow you to take

them in your own time,

deliberately, like boarding

 

a train you know you want,

with a solid name, a destination

stamped on the front.

 

 

First published in the American Poetry Review, July 2013