The Seventh Talking Scroll



a time for casting stones and
a time for gathering stones
together a time like no
other time cast a spell on
you but you won’t forget me
time after time and time be
fore time there was a land there
how does time operate in
the Bible how does time op
erate in the Odyssey
the tutor asks the girl time
and paradise are both near
and distant according to
the list you misunderstood
time casting a spell for so
long it meant not that time’s dark
power used memory as
a conduit to make one’s love
immortal rather on the
bus passing Myrtle where you
slid along the ice in love
and did not believe you’d grow
older you heard clearly that
woman’s voice gently explain
the spell time casts forces a
thing like forgetting if
forgetting were part of the
physics of feeling which has
a physics only a few
have attempted to describe
that time cuts the threads as
often as she ties them one
thing to another time casts
a spell even on the great
fear changes the great fear you
called it once your long fucking
dirty disgusting road love
that’s what you called it smoking
Payton’s cigarettes you had
been humiliated by
love so many times that’s the
point you told him who had some
how not been until now his
great fear had come forward it
told him the most horrible
things about life and time did
not heal always time did not
recover parts of yourself
you’d lost in the fray rather
those parts of you got stranger
unrecognizable new
even but no longer yours
you only saw them now and
then on the other side of
the road laughing enjoying
their new life but it was not
as sad as it sounds because
time cast the spell the great and
effective spell time time love
don’t touch the borders she wrote
in the tenth century when
a woman lives alone her
home should be messy she should
not lock the gate it must not
seem she has been putting
her things in order all day
awaiting the sound of the
carriage any carriage time
eating time time converting

the place back into the mind