Tim Laffey- A Poem

     After many years in Texas, in the computer services industry designing mainframe systems and tuning their performance, I am now retired and back on a portion of the old family farm in west central Illinois. Early on I wrote poetry, all that formal richness waiting to be broken was just so enticing. As it will though, life veered in another direction and while following my profession, I took up painting and sculpture. I will continue to pursue them.

     But recently the urge to write has re-emerged.

 

a slow so long

                        I

and moved among the trees its

copies. its green efficiency

each aspect of a blade of grass

has remade earth’s face

hides its finest stratagems in the open.

in its budshoots, rolled or folded,

in its arrangement of the blade on

noded stem. it’s here

or there, hopped up, took flight

parts newly created slightly altered

since it appeared, roughly around

spreading their duplicates, or its seeding

the juncture of blade and sheath

the rhizomes, strong or weak, around

the time the dinosaurs died

wrapping around and clasping

                        II

time to change, it first appears.

and moves off in new directions.

as the environment whispers,

assortments of twists and braids, the

funnels and shoots, traps and catches,

ignore the ordered workings

in green fueled cells, the odd

life from atoms’ bonds.

now needing only minor modifications,

slight nudges to the rudder,

that limber proteins engineered to pump

this was work done long ago,

                        III

we hear around us, hear it in the air,

trees prattling to grass, grass to birds,

the fat field mice hide under? that

roiling boiling field of wind bent grass,

red-tail hawk riding the air above,

parts in balance. can we hear it,

just this much, no more? each

is certain to get its share.

can we hear that voice in the voices?

birds to the seeds and berries

                        IV

a new protein bends differently

and a camel shuffles off, forested plains cover

and obviously look good doing it,

and thriving by new advantage.  

as they waltz, shrink and expand,

blackbirds as a million dusty days go by,

by their smaller, gracile cousins, the sloth

changes, adapts to the basin’s rise,

elk shrink down, great cats replaced

follow it in the larks and red-winged ones

give way to open grasslands,

                        V

ice advances and retreats, bulldozes

if you fail, you fail forever. time,

inevitably changing or not,

is coolly indifferent to the outcome,

is never rescinded. no going back. 

it’s offspring numerous as an

ocean’s basin. endless days go by.

of this game and wagers nothing

old mountains fall slowly

on those that think they’re victors

or run faster or jump higher,

pointing at different stars,

slowly, one step at a time

some leg grows longer,

swung around this variable star. slowly,

the five great lakes, pulverizes

the mammoths, come, then go, giant

time has the patience to wait things out,

                        VI

the earth’s axis circling about

up and down, in and out

the sweeter success is

the irony of it is, if you succeed

it is because of change. you

from that you started as. as ever

change irrevocably away,

a slow so long.