Maybe in Greek you can say time
is something real
like tides and sand, trees dividing
light. Maybe
in Sioux snows will do
and months can be when raccoons
wake from a thaw and
when geese lay eggs in the reeds.
But after picking cherries and a summer rain
I imagine the moment
in an alphabet of no fixed line.
I see the sweet meat bloom
from blackness to eternity
with nothing in between.
Maybe in the tongue
which gave us our mind
we can measure frequencies like
fruit and water.
But in my wet shirt and heavy from eating,
in the dreaming that comes from being full,
I keep trying to get it back –
the animal grace of picking,
fear of the thunder,
les temps perdu.
About Joseph Dionne
Joseph Dionne has published poetry widely and has won several prizes for his writing. His most recent work appeared in The MacGuffin, Amaranthus, The Lake Superior Review, Empyrea, and The Concho River Review. He has published a chapbook of poetry: The End of the Prairie as I’ve Seen It (Hudson-Browning Press), and has also published a novel: The Broken Places (Harper & Row). Joseph has a BA from Michigan State University and a MFA from the University of Oregon. He lives, with his wife, on five acres of woods with a lake; he divides his time between Europe – where he researches the Semiotics of Urban Spaces - and Northern Michigan, where he teaches writing and linguistics at Northwestern Michigan College.
One Comment
Proust would be proud