MAUREEN THORSON
HISTORY OF TIME
We're beached in our own minds,
the drunken sailor and I,
on this Sunday afternoon.
The kitchen clock, six minutes slow,
utters its shivery tick.
The sailor tries to pretend he doesn't exist.
First he gets real small,
and then he seems to melt -- his bellbottoms
into his denim shirt, his crinkly,
tinselly hair laying flat, then turning goopy.
But he can't lose his tubby heft,
spread out along its side
on the bathroom floor, anymore than I
can get this stupid song --
the big baboon, by the light of the moon --
to stop running through my head.
Never say the blind tedium
of molecules, with their pure lack
of awareness, is an achievable
goal for human beings. No matter
how drunk, we know how bored we are
of time, its endless police procedurals,
its physical evidence, the way
its fingers are all pointing to us.