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Cradled in loam, calved in ice, the future implies a person

there to keep time: a hand that shudders forward,

the green wound laced in frost.  Even the wind that blows now

over a colony of abstract values comes straight

from the time we were warned not to neglect;

putting a warmed toe in the foam

whose saccharine heritage makes the pier less than usable,

or more we know what to expect, the desire

to retract, the gradual agreement, thrills

fading in to the body’s late-arriving mechanic.

How we can bear ourselves

to mark our time’s inherent, disappearing reasonableness –

this golden figment, these profligate life forms,

all the animals still to be found

in trees and ponds – without giving

anything away that belongs to someone else, giving

everything away like a warm saccharine blush

on the full cheek of the one who’s properly latched.

That’s the question whose value is the index

for all we have and don’t have, the future

part of it, the hand holding the heart squeezed

by abstraction back into life is warmer still

than the arrow that buried its nose in the muscle,

the dumb ticking of the clock.