Time Bomb

Time Bomb

December sung dirges with vigor

In Tidewater like a humming lover

draping the sad evening sun

With orange cream and secrets

Hiding from us the knowledge

Of how to live with the weight

Of her call to a wet sleep.

The padded playground layered with leaves

In woods wet and worn

Took us away from the traps

Of school, boredom and unlit rooms

Full of murmuring adults.

We ran serpentine miles

In the aisles between trees

Through openings in vines

Across moss of unbearable green joy.

As interlopers from ‘the burbs’

We set off a pipe bomb

In a womanly hollow

Full of logs and stale water.

Hidden behind pine time sped up

Maples dead at sixty

Churned in a mix master

Bits and pieces of past and present

Looped under each other

Seconds twisted with years

A president landing in the lap

Of a clerk, trains wrapped around planes

Wars and rumors of wars

Plowed in to bark encrusted bits

Shards and sludge dropped on us

And a new world was formed

The fragments of which crawled about

to find a sympathetic glance.

Joshua Kight

11/5/10