Powerless
so time stepped aside for us:
to haul ice and read by candles,
slice onions turned translucent under flashlight,
cook food while it's still fresh on fencepost fires,
wake clockless at the break of blue,
fall in sepia to pillows and a moon...
It's like we've been reborn
in antediluvian Wyoming,
where gilded books and simple chores
can't substitute for
photos of a black hole swallowing a star ...
This life doesn't really exist anymore;
it's a scheme of extreme therapy
to take back what maimed us long ago,
when worlds like Machu Picchu
were only teller's jewels,
and we wanted to see through the trees
to words not fleshed out in books—
for lifetimes it was like that, like it is
right now, you and me as lords
scraping at some vista that is closing
to dream ourselves a better place,
one finally suitable,
with just enough to show us what we lack.
