POEM

The Behavior of Bodies, the Motion of Clocks
by Michael Evans

An orbit is a way of keeping time--
not a metaphorfor life
together with another life--a body and a bodyat odds with the room's linear constraints.
(The room itself is not a metaphor
for how we live.)
The bed does not unfold like two hands--one circling
the otherand transparent--as if loneliness
(the beating silence of these days
he lives without speaking) were enough
to suggest that time and distance are measured
with the same equation.
At night, he sets the clock
to an hour
that already exists
(thinly, as light)beyond the orbits he understands--
the comings and goingsof doctors, this routine of pills.He listensto the elliptical path
of his breathingand he knows the universe will not collapsein time to save his youth(for yourself, sir, shall grow old as I am,if like a crab you could go backward).
He dreams himself a young man,
but wakes to nothingless than he is.
He is not allowed a mirror and does not lookat his hands. Breathing, he countshimself to sleep. Were he a crab, he would give up this shell