Given time,
water cuts asphalt into black canyons, and tire tracks paint green lines. Given time, hummingbirds thrum across the gulf, find their way home again. Given time, will we inch across the chasm tiny birds braving sea? Given time, saplings sprout from rotted stumps, our breath feeds their rings. Given time, the trees give no thought to time. Given time, I stall here, plead for more.
Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash
The Prompt
Today’s poem was inspired by . . . drumroll please . . . cracks in the asphalt. The lines “Given time / water cuts asphalt into black canyons” came as I was looming like a giantess over these tiny black canyons. I liked the sound of the words, so I looked around me for more, spotted tire tracks blooming green in the fields, and the next line followed. When I got home, I made a whole list of lines that could follow the words “given time.” For example, “given time / I may learn / what this poem is about.”
For me, the poem that emerged is about zooming out from the intensity of a world viewed too-close—as if everything can be squeezed into a browser window. For me, it’s about taking comfort in the cycles of coming and going, growth and decay and growth again. It’s also very much about time and the question of what’s possible within it. Will we bridge our political and ideological chasms? Not perfectly—at least not in my lifetime. Sometimes that feels like a reason to do nothing or nothing much (or nothing much beyond an inner, anxious churning). I am such a tiny bird, and the sea is so vast. Some migrations must happen over a span of generations rather than in a single lifetime. I can still choose to be part of that movement.
If anything I’ve written here kicks off the beginnings of a poem for you, run with it! (Or walk, or wheel, or swim, or whatever it is you do.) If not, then I invite you to consider the word “time” and the verbs we tend to pair with it.
Take time. Spend time. Have time. Give time. Use time. Waste time. How interesting that the verbs we most often pair with the word “time” tend to land in the realm of ownership and consumption.
What ways do you find yourself thinking or talking about time? Where did you learn those beliefs or thoughts? What is their emotional impact? What’s their practical, behavioral impact? Are there other ways to think about time? Other ways to experience it? Other verbs with which it might be paired?
Let your mind play with these questions. Take your time. (See what I did there!?) When you find yourself antsy or drifting, step away from your thinking and climb down into your body. Take in the space around you—sights, sounds, smells, textures, all of it. Again, take your time.
Then imagine that the space you’re in—whether it’s a Target parking lot or an old-growth forest—is full of metaphors connecting to the thoughts you’re having about time. Really, just start with the proposition that you’re surrounded by stunning metaphors. That means you don’t have to invent them. The pressure is off! You just have to find what’s already there. What do you discover? How is time (or some aspect of it) like a red shopping cart? A mug of coffee? A bed of moss? Make a list of metaphors—the more outrageous, the better.
Among all your thoughts about time and all your discovered metaphors, what feels the zingiest to you? What would you enjoy writing about? Follow the warmth. See what happens.
As always, it’s okay to write a poem that your tomorrow self might deem ridiculous. Brilliant things like to hide just beyond silly or sappy or nonsensical poems. Sometimes, you have to write one or two or ten such poems to clear space for a shinier one to come through. And if no such brilliance emerges? Yay for all the sill-sap-sensical poems! You wrote something. What a gorgeous achievement! I mean that.
I look forward to reading your poems and reflections! Thank you for being here.
Well done Lisa! Beyond my amazement that your creative mind finds inspiration in the cracks in the asphalt, your poem raises the swirliing paradox of time, frends, adversary, co-conspirator, partner and stumbling block all together even in the scope of the day. It brought to mind a poem that the class above me when I was a junior in high school wove throughout the yearbook. It connected with that 17 year old teen and still does, alll these years later, sappy as it may sometime seem. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3FdlAgkTI0
Another Monday, Two Months Later
Now I have the time
to take you riding
in the car
to lie with you in private deserts
or eat with you
in public restaurants.
^
Now I have the time
for football all fall long
and to apologize
for little lies and big lies
told when there was no time
to explain the truth.
^
I am finished
with whatever tasks
kept me from walking
in the woods with you
or leaping in the Zanford sand.
^
I have so much time
that I can build for you
sand castles out of mortar.
^
Now I have the time
to see bad movies
and read bad books
aloud to you.
I can now waste time
on you and on myself.
^
Mid-week picnics.
Minding my temper in traffic.
Washing your back
and cleaning out my closets.
Staying in bed with you
long past the rush hour
and the pangs of hunger.
And listening
to the story of your life
in deadly detail
whatever time it takes
I have that time.
^
I've always wanted
to watch flowers open
all the way,
however long the process took.
^
I'd hoped that I might
take you traveling
down the block
or to wherever,
now I have the time.
^
Now I have the time
to be bored
to be delivered
to be patient
to be understanding,
to give you
all the time you need.
^
Now I have the time.
Where are you?
Rod McKuen
I had tea this moring with a brilliant former student, and we came to talk about a painful loss in our community 18 years ago of another death from suicide that tore lives apart. They were partners to the beloved who died that day, and they still move through this journey of grief and loss savoring the magical time they had together.
All this time later
we speak of it,
the curtain of shame removed,
the drowning incapacitation of silence
the darkness smothering light,
lifted like sea fog
dissolved into wide beauty of the ocean.
^
That beautiful autumn day 18 years ago,
When the earth shifted.
Cataclysmic messages coming forth
like missiles from unseen invader
as Elias slid into a world beyond our own.
^
A million tears have not brought him back.
All the myths the family needed
have lost their meaning,
gone like the bright life that once was.
^
At this table sipping tea,
I listen as you share the dark roads
that tragic passing led you down.
Finally merging into that place
where the loss still lives,
and your heart always remembers,
planning the seeds for love to
grow again.