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Poem: 51 Card Pick-up

We set our clocks ahead
thinking it mattered,
not thinking,

time is a deck of cards
swirling down an escalator,
churning face down at the bottom.

The streets roll into emptiness,
not from leaving
but stuck fast with staying,

and staying,
and I hurry as if I can run ahead,
as if I might be the one

to flip face up,
to miss the fall,
to float suspended

the city frozen beneath me.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I was in the bus tunnel yesterday charging up my Orca card, and playing cards were sprinkled all over the place like someone had been shuffling while escalating.  Not as dangerous as shuffling while elevating, but still.  If you're gonna shuffle, do it while sitting at a table or at least while standing still.

The city is pretty empty at this point, and even people like me who are just going to work and back are rare.  It's eerie, but it also made me think about all the empty places in the city and which one I would most like to wander through. 

The bus tunnel was not at the top of my list.  The library, on the other hand.  Can you imagine?  Even better, time travel to a 1980's library with card catalogs and those little slips in the front of the book that the librarian would stamp with a cha-chunk.


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