Time To Forget

“Forever is not as long as it seems.”

That's what you used to say, pruning the deadwood

From the dogwood tree.

Early every spring you’d take on this task

When its white flowers were budding,

Jumping at their chance to relish
In the air and the sunlight, and be cherished in turn by us,
Perennial dwellers too on this blue-green planet

That has long orbited the sun.

“Just ask God,” you’d say. “He’ll tell you what I mean.

Time goes a lot faster the more you’ve seen.

Before you know it, time goes so fast,

You can barely recognize it’s there at all.”

Stopping to remove the white visor from your head,

You wipe your brow with the sleeve

Of your light-colored shirt,

And, squinting in the sunlight,

You look up at the tree,

And in this moment it seems to me
That you are no longer searching for ways to perfect,

Or even simplify, as if your business were no longer

Earthly at all.

“Yep. I bet if you asked Him,
He’d say time doesn’t exist at all.”

The white buds hang like angels from the branches,

The sunlight careening off them like a sacred hymn.

You seem for a moment to forget what it is you’ve come to do,

And to recognize the beauty of all that is
And all that has ever been.