time telling itself to itself

 

Artist:  Leonard Koscianski

I love this poem by Jeff Hardin:

 

EVERLASTING   by Jeff Hardin

Where I live, a deep snow
dreaming the moonlight
back into its corner of sky
descends infrequently, so that,
haunting the woods, it makes
the morning into a dream,
quieter even than silence
knows to be. No one but
me, I lean my head pensively
against a window as if—of
all things—I get to eavesdrop
on time telling itself to itself,
a story gathering everything
all at once and for always.
Then a trinity of deer traipses
through, solemn as monks,
or maybe that’s how I need
to imagine them, my soul
in no hurry, contemplative
like that, over a white expanse,
in route to somewhere else.
I learned early of the everlasting,
and now and then I still say
those words—the everlasting—
in the way someone says book
or door jamb or privet hedge,
a thing to reach out for, to hold
in the hand, or to put to use.
If only the snow came more
often. If only the mind’s lone
wondering could see what God
sees, seeing what isn’t there:
the steps we didn’t take that
might have gone anywhere,
anywhere but where they fell.