XXXVI. Gutter Cosmology.

Pinned by a shallow current of wind,

caught between intention and accident,

there is a candy wrapper in the gutter.

This morning, I found myself arrested before it,

held in a manner I could neither justify nor withdraw.

A small, abandoned brightness.

Red, not of fruit,

nor of blood honestly come by,

but the red of manufacture—

dulled by the thin film of city residue,

still advertising a sweetness

it can no longer produce.

How fluent it is, this wrapper,

in the grammar of outlasting its occasion.

The unwanted acquire

an austere

immunity to time,

which takes no interest

in what was never wanted.

One thinks, despite oneself, of the reaching—

the near thing, the wrapped thing,

the light, disposable thing of a Tuesday—

a Tuesday on—what was the street,

someone speaking too loudly into a small device,

a child negotiating the height of a step,

the shadow of the building

adjusting its terms with the light...

The hand unfastens from the moment.

The moment from the day.

The day from its name.

Tuesday.

Excessive.

And yet,

this remainder, unclaimed.

The wrapper, its small sweetness spent,

released from the burden of intention.

How quickly purpose perishes.

How cleanly it leaves.

Patience—whose altars were converted

long ago to other uses—

takes it now:

drifting,

uncollected,

with nothing to do

and all the time there ever was

to do it.

For what it’s worth,

-Charlene Iris

One thought at a time.

One truth at a time. 

Because some epiphanies stay with you.