I only have a second to live.
Then the next second
kicks in. These packets

sparkle when I look at them
while holding a lit sparkler,
which I threw as a child, a few feet

away from where I stood
wanting a better arm. I have been
overly enthused for some time

about time, which is not
modular in the way it has been
in this poem, but nothing

is the way it has been
in this poem, not even this poem.
That’s one of the charms

of life, that when it turns
its head to cough, like the doctor
asks, a bird goes by outside

and life goes with it,
then pulls up its pants
and is fine, near as anyone

can tell, though it is obviously
dying, given that things
begin and end, between which

the middle prevails, otherwise
we’d call it something else,
given our interest in the truth.