A woodpecker is hammering a nearby tree, a sound like a loud clock that is ticking far too fast, but today not even this urgency can hasten time, which creeps like the lines of shadow, barely perceptible. It is the past that rushes, while the present remains placid. Still, but brushed with distance brought by air, imagining movement slow like a swimmer's deep underwater, I am transfixed by the day full of days.
Sunday Verse
Not Love Perhaps
by A. S. J. Tessimond
This is not Love, perhaps,
Love that lays down its life,
that many waters cannot quench,
nor the floods drown,
But something written in lighter ink,
said in a lower tone, something, perhaps, especially our own.
A need, at times, to be together and talk,
And then the finding we can walk
More firmly through dark narrow places,
And meet more easily nightmare faces;
A need to reach out, sometimes, hand to hand,
And then find Earth less like an alien land;
A need for alliance to defeat
The whisperers at the corner of the street.
A need for inns on roads, islands in seas,
Halts for discoveries to be shared,
Maps checked, notes compared;
A need, at times, of each for each,
Direct as the need of throat and tongue for speech.
