A Resolution

This year
is elderly

monthly shoulders
sagged in protection

toward a cavernous chest
heavy with days, hours
or crumpled moments


When it was young
the year knew itself
and
told no secrets

Now it quivers
toward me,

ready
to take to
the grave all it
has born

since I do not know
already
I would learn
to tell time for you

For instance,
love is
just a yearling
on lengthy legs

Body of Time

There is the way
Time turns its hide inside out

minutes and guts


Arc of neck, then a spilled
month

I am always in the sun
when the taste of hours
metals its way

Iron and rust against my tongue

Slippery now
is the only balm

when hewn, a hide
makes soft the winter

blind, I live in fleece
and small ticks of motion

my cost
bears up the clocks
turning to feeble and

bone
by bone

centuries peel back their lids

Safe Keeping

your face a pulpit
words silk
out of me

teach me my ear
teeth wrapping around it

worldly,
having eaten
foods of other soils

till me like earth

my mouth softer than cottons
holds your name


and time,

a skidding hash mark
black across gentle

begins to erupt
from our brows


I feel it is so

that life enters us all
in secret

no grand moment, symphonic
and gaping open

only a pleasurable morning
slung easily before

the watchtower of our want

faces pressed against
the glass, learning the pain
of color,

a prologue of hours
until we meet again