It Does Go Faster
Why is the night so long. My son flings
his arm over the rusted balcony rail into the darkness
of an overcast oceanfront. Because
it takes a long time for the Earth
to turn all the way around. My offering lately
begins out in space, which is time, which is running out.
Before us, the edge of the Atlantic materializes
in a ghostly rope uncoiling on the beach. Why
won’t it go faster. Anger laces up the throat of this boy,
as though I’m responsible. Why can’t it hurry up.
Oh, I wouldn’t want that. I whisper, caressing his arms
back inside the balcony, smoothing his windy head, thinking
how it does go faster. With each axial tilt, it will go
faster, all the rest of our lives quickening
across the shuttlecock of space-time, and my son
will one day wish for a gentle slowing. Wish, like me,
for relaxation of the torsion. In the dark pause
of a distance a container ship winks
into existence. Wind shushing water: It’s coming.
Delineating the night, dewdrop stars. It’s already here.
.
Edie Meade is a writer, artist, and musician in Petersburg, Virginia. Recent work can be found in Invisible City, New Flash Fiction Review, Atlas & Alice, The Normal School, Pidgeonholes, Litro, Heavy Feather Review, and elsewhere.
Stone Poetry Quarterly 