Time isn’t real:

a mural I saw at a museum exhibit, 
the words scripted across a lake 

of cloudy color against white. 
Except we had only twenty minutes 
before the doors would close 

and the guards ushered us back out 
into the rain. At the train

station, all the people turning
toward monitors, watching for arrivals 
and departures: each face cupped
 
like a flower toward the dropping
light. When I was a child, I liked

to spin in the playground--- 
my eyes fixed on the highest 
point of a rooftop,  

arms spread out like wings; 
the world a drum in a zoetrope. 
 

*

[ Zoetrope: Gr., ζωή zoe, "life" and τρόπος tropos, "turning" ]