Look to the Birds and Wonder
You sculpt and I’ll butter
Now. Then. Back and forth.
Layer on layer.
Have we lived this before?
Will we again?
And can I build the world in unplanned repetitions?
What time is it?
It’s six fifty one,
Nine minutes to seven,
GMT 18:51 and twelve point three seconds if
we ignore daylight savings.
You squat and I’ll dance
Our waxy hands that do work,
hang particles, build up, break down.
Playing here is important, blurring
away the atomic
structure –melted into soup by heat.
What time is it?
Time to creep in and slap
your doubts with the unsinging
lumps of productivity.
You salute and I’ll reach,
bits and pieces of a life that clump together
to answer what is there and what is it like?
If you look closely you’ll see exactly
what it’s not and
everything it’s made of.
What time is it?
The time it was yesterday, and
an hour ago, and a picosecond
after the universes went from zero to one,
fundamentally unchanged.
You melt and I’ll lift you,
and carve you up on the support
to mark our rigour-free capsule
of this moment, unreachable
by wrist watches.
Far enough into the future the past lies, and so does
this moment, and this painting, and there is
more happening than we-
What time is it?
Time to do the dance again.
On the scale of forever,
A dance and a painting live the same,
as do we, little creatures,
who may last 94 billion km around the sun,
and want our moment to be special.
You duck and I’ll swing,
In an infant breath of sudden breeze,
my hundred thousand parts neither
choice nor mathematics,
but something in between.
Look to the birds and wonder.
All things become less ordered over time,
and these might too,
as nature, the builder,
wars with the rules.
Finnbar Howell