Jane Zwart

Half the Time

 

In an emergency
the brain snaps pictures

 

at twice its normal speed.
Say a van swerves,

 

sparing a deer.
Sky and earth and sky

 

will tumble slow before
the man inside.

 

After, too,
the scene will screen

 

only in slo-mo.
I think of him

 

as a leaf does flips
under a maple’s shape.

 

Something about this calm,
this light: the leaf

 

in somersault
is exactly like

 

a home movie
of a leaf in somersault.

 

I watch it fall in a strobe
of blinking

 

and of sight;
the yellow glider drops

 

the same as if its shape
were burned

 

into a length of celluloid
shot in Super-8–

 

instead of colored
upside-down

 

on my retinas.
I know why:

 

the quiet mind
lays memories lazily down,

 

snagging pictures
from time’s current

 

only half the time.
A quiet mind,

 

like a camera trained
on conflagrations

 

topping cakes,
it nictitates

 

in such a way
that joy, reseen,

 

will only screen
in flickering and a rush.