To Ezra Pound

Just before we left our London life for Nigeria four years ago, my mom sent me a card, with the following poem:

And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
Not shaking the grass

Since buying me my first book of poems (ee cummings) when I was about 12, I have associated the startling aptness of poetry with motherly love. We were leaving for another life. There'd be less time now, even though before there was still not enough time. There is never enough time. Time slips through our fingers, the hourglass empties all too quickly. All that remains is the grass, and the memory of the mouse.

I've been a bodily funk: automating my existence in the past few days. Until this evening, when we let Pharoah Sanders sing to the simple joy of being-there, grass blades curling underfoot, fresh moon and fresh night sky, in an eternal now, the watchful mouse nearby.