Slow things

Slow things take time in their soft warm hands, till it rises and expands.

Slow things demand time. I have no time for slow things and yet I am slowing down to make time.

I want to go back and take it slow. Once we were all children released from the mouth

of a gigantic green spaceship and told to run off red and wild into the world. The scenery flowed by us

and we were breathless and wondering like stars, and it seemed like the world teeming with so much color would never end.

But then from time to time, it did. And so we started looking back,

tried to slow down, wanting to slow down, without knowing how.

My old heart is racing these days but not in a good way, say the doctors. I can’t wait for time.

I am restless. Like a moth, I have not found my spot yet, to land and play dead on.

Cars rush on the roadways, endlessly, endlessly, like so many jitterbugs, glittering.

The Christmas lights dance in straight proportioned lines, mathematically,

sending signals to the sky, that the darkness intercepts, then absorbs without meaning to

as I close my eyes. I say I want to slow down without anticipation,

not like the stealth of a tentative feline waiting to spring,

but like the unwinding of a spent emotion with no fallout, no recoil.

Like stretching my toes till they curl into space

as inevitable as gravity in slow motion.

Like the memory of a slow kiss landing on my forehead, two soft lips never leaving.

Like staying for a while, pretending not to nap on the sofa, no one ready to leave.

Once I waited for him in the dappled light, answering an epiphany that I thought never came true.

Only it did. I want to take a breath for that moment and keep it for a bit.

I want to lie down and prepare for moss and grass. Feel the sunlight, a slow burn on my thighs.

Here I lie in this warming of cold feet, till I am one with the wood

where nothing is too hot nor cold, but simply is

equal for the moment.