waving good-bye

from the bank

or the boat.

4

There’s a story,

probably apocryphal,

that when the Taoist master Lao-tzu

was passing into the wilderness

one of the guards at the frontier

recognized him and pleaded,

“Oh Master, leave us your wisdom

on the mystery of time,”

to which Lao-tzu, riding his donkey,

turned and laughed over his shoulder,

“Too late to stop now.”

4A

In another version of the story

Lao-tzu turns his donkey around

and rides back to the guard,

reaches down and touches his shoulder,

looks into his eyes, and says,

“I can tell you this for sure:

The future is always on time

and your ass better be there.”

5

The duration of a moment

is best measured

as the length and depth of time

required to say:

“Meet me in the French Quarter at midnight.”

(Though I personally favor

“You must go now.”)

6

It may be that not all nows

are of equal duration

(the hydraulic position)

or that they are

(the mechanistic view)

or that they are

experienced differently

by different people

(the experiential notion).

A huge argument about this,

the nature of time, rages,

and some of the boys have begun

calling each other dreadful names

like “dithering shithead,” “moron,” and “angel.”

Now, now.

7

“Time,”

Rexroth wrote,

“is the mercy of eternity.”

Which doesn’t mean for a minute

that you can expect

mercy from time.

Gregory Peck

shot in the back.

The patchy cream and ash

of alder bark.

Your hand in mine,

both of us looking

up at the big screen

and crying,

O nameless sorrow,

and a meanness

in the world–

sometimes

just too damn much.

The stranger in the same aisle,

who arrived in the purple

’56 Ford,

calls over, “Don’t feel bad.

You know, the great thing about life

is you get till you die

to decide if it’s worth it.

That’s plenty of time.”

The man sitting behind us

says under his breath,

“Shit,

they shot

Gregory Peck

in the back.

What’s that

all about?”

And on-screen

the bandito who shot him

kicks Gregory Peck in the ribs,

hard,

to make sure

he’s dead,

then pushes back his sombrero

and eases the hammer down on his stolen Colt.

He says to Gregory Peck’s body

lying in the blood-soaked dust,

“It’s about time,

amigo.”

Moments ago now.

And just then,

that long, slow,

forlorn cry.

And when we finished weeping

we walked out of the movie about time,

still holding hands,

into the late winter afternoon

under a low, scuffed-nickel sky.

Smithereens

Tear this jagged chunk of obsidian from between my

lungs and smash it. Crush it.

Grind it to brilliant dust

and then shovel it back into the diamond nova,

feed it to the furnace of roots,

to the million-year-old flower

perfect in the shark’s brain,

the tiny crimson poppy tattooed at the base of her spine,

then walk down to the river and open your hands