The insulted clock
sees couples kissing
and stews, ticking indignantly
as they stop time.

What, she says,
is the point of me
when it’s so easy
to forget me?

Come on, she says
to one pair — two short women
wrapped in each other,
hands in each other’s hair.

Come on, get it over with,
get back to being able to hear me.
You can’t get away with eternity
forever,

no matter how good it feels.
I want to get my own hands on you
and remind you that no moment
should be immortalized

above any other.  Love me
and my insistence on forward
and direction and beginning
and ending.  It’s the best advisor

we have, that knowledge
of short time.  You’re messing
that up with love, pleasure,
with your deafness to me. 

Keep this up too long
and when you do come around
I’ll hurt you more than I want to,
and it’s nothing you’ll get over soon. 

Sometimes,
I let myself believe
I matter,

then the wind comes.
I lean away from it
just a little,

and then the sun forces
a hat onto my head 
merely by shining,

so I resolve to be quiet
and insignificant,
just another part of the world

working my small practice.
If it matters, it will matter.
What I do, I do because

I was made to —
what work is mine to do
was given to me,

and the importance
of me to the work
is as incidental as the sweat

on my brow is to the sun:
something to be wiped off,
a distraction.

Let your breathing go,
slack your grasp on day.

Turn your eyes inward
to the frame,
see ivy curling and clinging,
rooting the cracks,
tearing down its own ladder
as it climbs…

as ever intended,
as required;
and now, what you at last desire,
for this is all that’s left to do;
it will be easier soon for you.