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Speed
Some things properly can’t be done fast,
like reading a poem, or kissing,
or driving in places with names like
Eureka Springs.
Children at piano speed through their Bach
to drown out their mother's cry: “Slow down!”
Why are the young, whose lives stretch out ahead,
in such a hurry?
And when you fall behind a car that pokes along,
you say, “It must be someone old,” and when you pass,
confirm it--some old woman
who surely knows
her days are drawing short
proceeds like a queen on a flowery float,
dispensing time like petals left and right,
as if she's got a million
hours to squander. Think of the oak’s growth.
Think of the ax. Less simply, study a wren
fluffed over her eggs for days,
factual as the galaxy
that somersaults over her head, like a pinwheel
pushed by a child’s breath. So Einstein,
watching his hair get white,
noticed that years fly by
at the same rate that love’s eyes dilate.
He took the crushed ferns called pencil
and wrote his theorem in a slow scrawl,
taking his own sweet time.
- Hope Coulter
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