At first, I wished you had been there to see
the children, arms spread, running in the grassy
expanse under the new fall sky with a leaf sea
forming (a drop at a time); while we listened to the Modern Lovers' sassy,
naive declaration of independence: "I'm a Little Airplane--Neeeyow"
you could have brought the image compression lens
you had concocted out of a huge cardboard tube. I see now
the futility of the wish, but like the idea it sends:
we always want somehow to pack eternity into the moment
as if it were not already saved by the experience. When
memory fades, faith (and the experience of others so bent
as we are) carries something like it. Call it a replica, then;
a snapshot taken with a different camera yet still seen
as the children run away, arms spread, from everything we've been.
