December 2017
Martin Willitts Jr
mwillitts01@yahoo.com
Now that my organic garden is gone for the season, I can look back at the harvest I have blanched and frozen in order to last the rest of the year. Every year, the end of the season is sad for me. I miss all the plants, watching them from seed to end of the cycle. The winter months will be sent staring and sighing at the backyard. I will be looking at the seed catalogs, planning on graph paper how I will rotate and plant next year in my limited backyard. One cycle ends, another begins. How is this different from life?  I watched my own son grow, and I watch myself grow old. I wonder what happened to all that time? 
 
​Just Now


Just now, an ocean wave covers a beach
and retracts,
like a man pacing
while his wife gives birth.
 
Time is never suspended,
although it might feel that way--
unmoving as everything around it is moving
in contradiction.
 
We think time evaporates.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Nor does it move faster forward, accelerating
quicker than we can perceive it.
 
Just now, a white film of snow is settling
for an indeterminate amount of time,
bringing the premonition of winter.
Otherwise, how else would we know change?
 
The world has beginnings and absolute endings.
Just now, a meteor has a trajectory across
the universe; a rain drops on water, ripples out,
closing like the valve of a heart. 
© 2017 Martin Willitts Jr
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