The Gift of Analog Time

In the time of greater losses and lesser losses
I felt driven to possess an atomic clock –

my own machine to mark molecular motion
and to allow for time outside time.

If you put all the what-ifs in a giant trash bag
say the kind that’s filled with dried leaves

it still wouldn’t be big enough to hold
the alternatives to an ordinary life –

let alone one marked by an eclectic
approach to danger and greed.

Regret makes for a terrible soup
all dried herbs and nothing to wake up the broth

All I can think about now is sleep and my hope
to wake in another station of the multiverse.

*

Carol Dorf has received fellowships from the Hawthornden Foundation, Zoeglossia, and the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference. Their writing appears on the Poetry Foundation website, in several chapbooks, and in journals that include “Pleiades,” “About Place,” “Cutthroat,” “Five South,” and “Scientific American.” Founding poetry editor of Talking Writing, they taught math and writing in Berkeley USD, as well as at museums and conferences.