Epoch, a Division of Time

Published by Apeiron Review, September, 2017

What was doesn’t work.
My longing has closed,
not dead in its track

but like a fusion of gender
or the stuff stars shed in space.
Hegel declared every idea

contains its opposite—
that life is wondrous
yet we smell the sulfur preserved

deep within earth’s crust.
Not to get stuck I move forth
drawn to undigested fragments

not speeding past pool halls
on the back of a bike
but on my pen:

“our greatest right
is to choose how we think.”
My breath lands on a child

a tiny prophet proclaiming “start”
so I wander into an ancient atmosphere
rendered speechless

with generational tugging
with pulsing solar waves
with this child running to me.

It’s something fierce this striving
late in life to become an image
of yourself with more thirst.