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.
