On the rock, needles falling from trees,

It is there, a face I can not see, a face I do not know.

 

Trees in space, needles in space, fine points in a pattern,

the eye makes the pattern into a tree, the pattern remains.

 

Time breaks down if looked at long enough.

It is there, a face I do not know;

a face from the future.

 

Time breaks down.

The rocks are oblivious.

The river snakes, it will continue,

it is not the sequence we perceive, it is a river.

 

Time breaks down.

There are lights on the path,

lights and walkers, lights and walkers, lights and walkers.

 

There it is; a face in the gap between the cliff walls,

on the rocks, an etching soon to be extinct, a rubbing

from another period.

 

There is more here. Is it the eternal? Hidden among the rocks,

he is not the sequence we perceive.

 

Every seventeen steps there is a light, no nineteen,

There is no pattern, the light appears at random along the path.

 

There are walkers, lights and walkers, Capulets and Montagues, she, it is a she, a face from the future.

 

Time breaks down. I press my face against the chain link,

God is there laughing among the greens and grays of the valley below. Who is it, and why does it laugh?

 

Time breaks down. Where is she along the path?

A child runs down the path, the mother smiles.

Is she here now?

 

Time breaks down. My daughter walks past, she is with a boy,

the sequence will not hold, it is all slipping, the path

is broken into fragments, irregular pieces, occasional glimpses at odd moments.

 

Time and Capulets, lights and walkers, Capulets and Monta…

No; Capulets, only Capulets, for now…