08: Watch

A handsome watch unworn is

a day unwound.

He preferred, rather, to search for time,

when asked, read the son's movement from dawn,

find where he has lain the tree's shadow down

into a rock, and where he has lain

the rock's shadow down into the earth, and there

dig the numbers before night falls.

Here I find him, in dark, hands

caked in dirt, tear stricken

face, a desert of paths in dust;

I tell his eyelids 'Dream of numbers', and begin again

where we set out - kiss his forehead.

Best wind,

and crank, this

is not automatic; shake his distemper, lost in loose-wrested guile,

snubbing your thumb off your nose - a match on red phosphorous, powdered glass, gum arabic.

Your forehead called the secret of life in flames in the dark and learned it

never speaks; that dancing flame does not let

its game down,

crack a stick in its sneak through night, tell you what comes. Up over the mountain,

how to be ready,

prepared ahead of it, see his face everywhere - and tell Father time;

bind your wrist. See, we have this cycle