And then I arrived –
I don’t know how I got there
Or where I came from
But I was there
Teacups melted time away
Drinkers mumbled some nonsense
A girl spun round and round
Or was she dancing –
A tree grew from the face
With trinkets hanging and dangling –
A rodent or some such looked my way
“What are you doing?”
“I’m thinking.” Said I.
“Why would you do an awful thing like that?”
I didn’t answer –
The girl stopped spinning
She looked up toward the tree
Then she looked at me
A tree arm gently raised her up
And she became a dangling trinket
The rodent spoke again
“I never said that, and you know it.”
Time melted into pools of paint
So many colors –
The rodent and the trinkets didn’t notice
Pools of paint climbed up everything
The things melted as time had
The face from which the tree grew
Had gone with time –
It was the face of time
Only I remained
Pools of paint crawling toward me –
Where had time gone
From the poetry collection Cats, Coffee, Catharsis. Inspired by the paintings for “Alice in Wonderland” by Salvador Dali. Click here to see them all.
James Pack 