And what did you do with your lost hour?
—Harry Teague
Well, I didn’t sleep, that’s for sure,
nor did I bake bread. Didn’t practice piano
or write a poem, skate ski or do sumo squats.
Neither did I throw javelins.
Nor fake my own death in a gruesome car accident,
nor steal modern art nor moon rocks nor whiskey.
I didn’t spelunk. Didn’t sink in a ship.
Didn’t crawl through the sewer.
Didn’t get a tattoo. Didn’t twerk.
Perhaps there was part of me
that did what I am always trying to do—
untether from time and lose all sense
of who I am and what I think and
what comes next and how it’s supposed to be—
yeah, I’d like to believe that for a lost hour
perhaps some part of me thrived and joined
with the universe so completely that it knew itself
as the dawn that comes when it comes.
Yet another of your poems perfect to share with my Universe study group. We are discussing the work of Brian Swimme, David Bohm, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and other luminaries in cosmology. Your poems so often enter the seamlessness that underlies all this work, illustrating it beautifully. Thank you yet again.
Oh this is a luminous group of writers! I am thrilled you share my poems there … thank you! I once did a whole series of poems in collaboration with Barry Spacks on Swimme’s powers of the universe … how I love his perspective! And what a great study group.
Oh my–Harry Teague always has good questions, and you’ve answered so well! You offered a visual polyglot full of surprises, then concluded amazingly in an unexpected switch…a very satisfying closing… Wow! Thank you!
That was a fun poem to write, and you’re right! Harry is a fabulous conversationalist!