One

poem/note

It's a boring evening / and I'm counting the time in words / while waiting for a call. / Oh, here it comes. The call. / And I finally do have something doing. I mean, / counting the time in words is something, too. / Through my counting, I have learnt that time / is lonely—it starts at one / and stays there, ever always counted as one. / One, one, one. / Time is counting, and no, it doesn't slip / through my hands like fish, / swimming its slimy length off my palms, dipping, / head first into golden liquid light, / once in my hands and now no more. / Time is not fish. Time / lingers here still, / and all the words of my life circle it in / ones, ones, ones. / All the words of my life gather and circle it in one full swoop, slowly, / almost slowly I do not realize how far I've gone, until I look / and find that I can't find / my starting point. / I am caught up in the body of one. I become / fish, and slip away. /

In two hours, I shall be done with my call. / The evening will greet me goodbye and go / with the sun, down the horizon, / dissolving into night. / Night will settle onto my skin—my skin, / which is now a fresh dewy green, / will one day turn pale and grey and fall to kiss the ground. / And all will grow and change. / All will grow and change but time. / And all will leave it, too.

---

“One” is the ever-flowing, ever-moving nature of Time. As opposed to the common perspective of Time slipping away from us, we do the slipping— we slip away from Time. Time feels the length of our slimy bodies slipping from its skin. Our moments detaching. We are the ones who define the moment— the moment comprising our lives and experiences. We mould it.

The poet begins the poem with the poetic persona living in a moment defined by waiting. In this waiting, the poetic persona seeks to while away Time. But indeed, it is in the attempt to count the seconds leading up to the next that the poetic persona realize that s/he whiles away.

It is in this realization that the next moment arrives, and in the deliberation of this realization that the moment gradually slips into another. The call ends. Night falls. One experience comes, then goes. Parts of life fade into memories. Time lingers.

The poet expresses our movement through Time through the substitution of virgules for rows of lines. Each verse between slashes constitutes a moment, each moment moving into the next in linearity as opposed to being brought back into the comfort of the poem’s body. This linear movement continues, providing temporary security, with each moment shielded by each slash, until the end where there is no slash to shield our final passage.

Though perceived by the light and darkness of each day and the rising and setting of the sun, Time moves in ones, ones, ones. It circles in ones and no further. But we? We are the dreadful movement we fear, the fearful passing of the present. We are counted in base 10, our bodies changing, moving, defining.

When we eventually slip away, Time lingers as though it had not experienced us. We take our prints, our evidence of existence. Like selfish brats, we gather all that we are and quietly—very quietly— slide away from the body of Time into the unknown vastness. We strip Time of the adornments of our lives. We leave.

---