Time

The general momentum of things won't stop scratching this heat-warped record of songs we used to sing to one another under the sycamore tree that reached up to the sky out of the snow or the long grasses.


The time that passed, even in the shine of the January snowfall, even in the March melt, has never come to a pitched heat, never even a dramatic swell, but only marched relentlessly on one second-hand tick after another, with no climax and no resolution.


Billie Holiday's voice on a disc has dug out in a few tiny canyons that she circles around and around, following the sun overhead, spiralling back to the beginning as if she could visit the same place in time, ever, ever, ever.


Now even the compression of Madeleine Peyroux's mp3 points to a certain instant in time, a year that must hear everything more clearly, louder than before, blowing out the frequencies as if somehow we can mount time's momentum, as if somehow we can ride it harder and faster until it is ready to drop, and finally, our weary songs can sleep.


But the songs keep existing forever, slipping deeper into the past, falling forward helplessly into the future.

And time won't pick up its step one bit, even if we sing until it tears our throats.