Nothing But Paradise (audio only)
Click the icon above to listen to this audio poem.
When the big clock at the train station stopped,
the leaves kept falling,
the trains kept running,
my mother’s hair kept growing longer and blacker,
and my father’s body kept filling up with time.
I can’t see the year on the station’s calendar.
We slept under the stopped hands of the clock
(adore, verb from Latin, adorare,
from ad- ‘to’ + orare- ‘speak, call pray’)
You lie asleep beside me,
one hand on the pillow and cupped
at your mouth, as if to tell a secret.