The Diaphanous Library / new poems 2011

Just As It Collapses

I grasp
it
just as
it
collapses

and clutch
an hour,
a day,
a year,
a decade

before a lifetime
falls away
and I am left
standing in the rubble of
"then,"

instead of swinging away
on a chandelier
with my one free hand
into the wide-eyed open of
"now."