trades places with San Diego. When they ask how

I covered the wildfires in snow, I say

I had time on my hands.

* * *

My grandfather was a clock

who stopped before I met him.

I’ve heard he was so kind

you could look into his face

and know you’d never been late

for anything. My mother is still

a little girl riding on his shoulders.

Time flies and she reaches up

to pluck feather pens

from its wings so I can write

this life down. I try.

But it doesn’t stay down.

It keeps flying so fast I count

my wrinkles the way I used to

count sheep. When the number

gets high enough, I’m told I’ll fall

asleep forever, but:

I once watched a woman skip

her gravestone across a lake

like a smooth pebble. Death hops

if you let go at the right time.

The Buddha says

the right time is always now.

* * *

My father calls me on the phone

and before I can say hello, asks,

Do you know what Steve Jobs said

the instant before he died?

He said, WOW!

Time is money.

But the end of money

is wow.

* * *

My friend wakes up at noon.

Goes to bed at eight. Wants less time

because she wants less pain.

I understand. I’ve been there too.

I can spot a scar beneath a wristwatch

from a hundred yards away.

And no, it is not the weak who try

to clock out early. It’s people

who are desperate to go home.

* * *

Einstein says time is relative.

Says the higher you get above sea level,

the faster time goes. I live in Colorado.

My house is over a mile into the sky.

All day I hear the wheels of time

burning rubber on the clouds,

my life in a getaway car, racing

toward the border, which is an invisible line

I only call death when I forget how to speak

eternity’s language, forget that to run

out of time is to run into the truth

that none of us have ever been

our bodies. If we were—how

would we fit in each other’s hearts?

* * *

To make up for lost time,

you do not need to know why

time went missing, or what

kidnapped it, or if its face

was on back of a milk carton

every day for fifteen years.

To make up for lost time, you need

only to put down the grudge

you are holding so you can pick up

the phone and say, How many days

did we need each other at the same time

without knowing it?

Bitterness is the easiest way

to leave this world having had only

a near-life experience.

* * *

My partner and I have had hard days.

Hard months. But time stops

when you’re in love,

so I am the same age

as I was when we met

five years ago.

She makes time for me