On Time

(Place your hands where you please)

It’s been set up

The custom-black couch, the embroidered

Gold watch

The long corridor with water tanks,

Barred windows.  The backstage

With public access, so not a full truth

Only half

I watch my reflection in the glass

I have already drank

I rinse my laugh

As the doctor says

‘You will mature over time,”

The body  hung, as by  wire or  vine

Like an exposed joint above the fire.

I nod for the  flames to swill my sides.

But

He says,

(making the note of fingers

On my face, tracing the lumps)

Raised mouth ignites like a match’s nub

-          You have time yet

I already watch my wrist in greedy snatches

As if looking for a pulse

I am out of it

As ‘they’ would say, the audience  in the wings

Of the provincial angel

Pulling the crown

Of triumph

Over the eyes as the child still sleeps.

Or keeps, time in the palm

Like an animal plucked from space

Like a wish, a metaphor

A habitat missed

Too ashamed, like surveying the catch

Consciously, of fish now hooked

Yet knowing that is losing time

And looking for the line, like something stitched

Yet rather than had, it is something told

In silence, on the last platform, alone

Its paradox of in and out is given, found

In the hands

Yet is never known.