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With us though we are not
listening
are timers, lub-dubs, ticks at the wrist,
a faint hoosh softer than soap in your ears,
and another slower marker, below the threshold
of hearing, a low wing-flutter sound through time
of the calendar pages, snowy farms falling, sleighs,
repeatable trees in a blur of greens, same placid cows
and gold fields harvested again and again.
I was told Time was like a bird appearing
every million years to brush its wingtips
on a rock big as Everest, and when worn
finally away, even that was not Eternity.
Imagine the faintness of that sound,
the printed lithos detaching a dozen yearly,
the pictorial syllables of Currier & Ives.
And what are the markers of duration
for those already on slow, the locust
drinking its roots like a dark dream
in which the tree says finally 'come up'
in its flavor, or the tick awaiting months
its swoon of blood? I listen for those sounds
slower than living, trees thickening another ring,
the millimeter growth of bones, and for every bird
touching a rock.
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