Would Joy Pervade Us?

What if the machinery of time were just a
little motor somewhere like one of those

Erector Set motors behind a little curtain
near an open window on the third floor

whizzing a little as its gears turn and
everything that occupies any kind of space

grand small macrocosmic microcosmic
danced to its frail tune even those deep space

barely squintily visible planets and star clusters
where we have no idea at all when they

might break for lunch or lie down to die
and the machinery of time of course

never runs down nor speeds up nor
fluctuates in any way though we often

experience its intrepid doggedness at its
task as either swifter or slower and by

God’s direct Power as sometimes altogether
non-existent though those gaps be rare and much

sought after among the clackety-clacks of
what we take as real life

And so here’s this little machine after all
by flapping curtains on a wooden stool say

a really small machine of no imposing size
clickety-pinging along really modestly

and millennia of jungles lift their teaks
and crashes of ocean bash shore-rocks incessantly

And yet if this little contraption were to
short out or simply cease altogether

and go still maybe in a
worrisome puff of smoke and distinct

electrical odor then would all existence just
collapse or would as it were invisible

cage doors open to evocative melodious choir sound
and we’d flow out or in to some

timeless place on earth where things would
halt their progress towards decay

or would they? Or would we all simply
be expanded and ascended into a

sweet pure timelessness yet continuing to
breathe and breed as before or

would that curtained window there on the
third floor then be all that is?

---

4/23/07 (from Invention of the Wheel)

Categories: Poems