Time Sits on the Windowsill
By mpgarofalo
8.5.4.1
Excepts from:
The Windows of Time
5. The Windowsill Talks to the Sun
Time sits on the windowsill like a tired coin,
sunlight counts its edges and forgets to return,
I fold my day into the pocket of my shirt---
the stitches hum with singing seconds,
and somewhere a minute yearns to be born.
Daybreak on the windowsill,
a thin coin of light
counts the rooms awake
with an indifferent hand.
The kettle remembers,
steam writes a small apology.
The street folds its shadow
into a single neat crease.
And, we catch and hold
of whatever the morning offers.
April sighs through a curtain of mist,
Hiding every secret that time has missed,
On a windowsill where the shadows sleep.
Dusty books humming a soft blue tune,
Counting the eyes of a springtime moon.
Time folds the day like a weathered map,
Resting its paper head in my evening's lap.
Near a windowsill carved from ancient light
I sew a protest patch into Time's sleeve;
Where small, shy clocks never take their leave.
The windowsill was layered in dust and light,
the books kept count when no one looked,
a clock loosened its grip and dripped minutes,
we borrowed a moment worn by our fingers,
while time stood nearby, pretending not to notice.
4. The Glass Eye
A river made of hours erodes the fragile days.
The marrow of the century all dissoled away.
Duration twists in the shadow of a rusted gate.
A clock falls and breaks its face.
Time looked out the window and cried.
Liquid centuries erode the heavy bones.
Mirrors of duration turn to stand alone.
As April unravels time across the neon sky;
The weight of Abstract blinds Geometric eyes.
And Hours petrify into absolute colorful zero.
A skin of silver glass
forgot its fixed lifelong frame.
The window opened wide
to speak an unnamed name.
Transparency subverts the static
opague laws of sight;
Where shattered seeing bleeds
a sharp geometric knife.
The inverted eye dissolves into
a bottomless month's delight.
The window opens inward
to dissolve a frozen rooom,
The awakened eye dissolves
into a boundless noon;
To free the trapped eternities
within a clear glass eye.
Pure emptiness winds its clocks
across a vacant sky.
The silent pendulum was stopped
halted in its flowing stride.
3. Time Gazes Out the Window
Time looks out the window, humming...
remmbering vast oceans that never existed.
Tree rings become tomorrow’s maps.
Hours drift upward like a smoky new geometry.
The future folds itself into an unnamed date.
A tired bokeeper stares out the window
counting the light into small, obedient coins.
The kettle remembers the hour before it sings.
The calendar peels itself away, slow as skin,
keeping the fingerprints of what we almost did.
Time glances out the window, listens to the rain
practice its multiplying arithmetic on the street.
Dust lifts from the old chair in invisible flocks.
Morning is released from the clock’s cold hands,
while memory buttons its coat against the dawn.
2. Time Leaves the Window Behind
Time loosens her sandals in the garden,
she rests among rosemary and rocks.
A breeze turns the pages of the afternoon,
and in each moment the leaves are briefly lifted
before settling back into the long green now.
Time stands on the lawn like statue of steel,
peering through the glass at the lamp’s bright eye.
The rug inside unspools a river of dark thread,
where the chairs are briefly islands in quilts,
and the house is a secret folded into the hours.
1. Time Is A Word
April comes between March and May,
somewhere in the Spring Season it prayed.
Verbs telling time in a web of words,
e.g., just needed 'ed' for a phoneme, say.
Words love to embrace other words,
sometimes free of any thing anyway.
Nature does not say "April", we do;
Nature shows 'April' in tenuous ways.
To be human is to speak often
of years, seasons,
months, weeks, and days.
BU4001
The Tick Tock Tractatus
Speaking of Time: The Poetic Investigations
