bundles

A lifetime bundles itself in clusters
of two or three years, delineated
by walls of various houses and
what happened there.
What images were projected
upon them: the shadow-shape
of a certain dog, or the edge
of a support beam meeting the porch floor.

You live somewhere. You see
these things, but you do not notice them.
Hundreds or millions of times your eyes pass,
your secret memory storing each pass away
for later, when you will need to remember this place.
Each grazing of the gaze a stretch of thread
in the spool.

And of course there are those things that define
the perimeters of the year bundles:
a smell that was there, a sound that travelled past.
wild spearmint growing at the back door,
the sweep of cars down the road. the traffic light
switching from green to yellow to red. and the things
your love tended in those years to talk about.
your rituals around getting ready for bed at night.

The subtle trick of time is in each second passing. To notice
this would drive us mad. Yet there it goes.
And again.
All that is behind falls further behind and an end
grows closer. Again, now, gone. Again.

So it is that we can only catch time, hold it--
spin it before us--
in the form of memory. In memory, we can
still its indifferent motion.

A lifetime bundles itself in clusters. Of years,
not more than two or three.
Look back.
The edges are there,
plain as the day.