One pass round the clock

I. Ascent
Time bears no features
outside the self.
It wears a face
in our hands and fingers
taking it’s twitches in a mind
winding itself
like a clumsy clock.

Thus, caught in a world
which bears one up,
like a ferris wheel, rocking,
each moment marks
a rough deliverance:
happenstance, terror.


II. Descent
Left none but memory,
he takes up his mystery
like a cloth.
Unwinding
curious concatenations of a self
to morning’s threads
whose rouge licks,
coloring his deeds.

And bearing down time’s footmen
for late review
he finds himself happy, a magpie or crow
delighting in golden cuff and buckle
whose gleams ripple the loss and lull
wallowing in the wake of his mind.