Warped Time

If time is truly a fixed and linear construct
(marching from one beginning or another towards each ruled end,
rank-and-filed across calendar pages and appointment books
and chronological memos stuck to the refrigerator door),
then how is this:
that just now, in this still room,
your mother’s slow slip into oblivion
is measured instead by the ebb and flow of a pulsation softly spherical;
something breathily more round and pliant than you could ever imagine

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Jean K. Dowdy, a displaced Appalachian horticulturalist who lives, works, and gardens in the relative wilds of northeast Florida. Her publications include the occasional gardening/food column in local periodicals, a contribution to Oberon Poetry Magazine, and a couple of flash pieces featured on John Dufresne's "Flashpoints" website.