Just over the threshold of a new year...

...this is how I feel.

Time is pouring out of the pitcher and I fail to drink it

Half-asleep, I skim over it in a derelict little boat.
I admire it, smell it, dip my fingers in as I pass,
but neither cup my hand nor lift it out to drink.

Moments themselves have texture, weight, like food:
cheesecake or toffee richness, thick cream: being
and being in a moment seem the only worthwhile things,
to somehow get at the food of moments, to taste
every single one, finish one blessed meal before I starve.

Every person, too, is a well, a column of water going deep
into the earth. Like dogs we lick the brackish surface,
too stupid to lower a bucket to fresh depths. Our tongues,
impatient organs, rule the hour, killing us with our own thirst.
Even the wells we are we cover with planks and long nails.
Even the bucket-drinkers are parched then; even the well-diggers.

Moment and person, both seem not of this world.
Arrested (as we once or twice have felt them each to be
if we've had any life at all) they are in no way related
to time or space. Personality, the who-you-are, seems then
not just well, but sea. Not a drop in the ocean, but the ocean!
And not an ocean on which you float, but in which you drown,
skillfully and alive, like a mermaid. The Other is your oxygen
right then. For just a moment. Lost but not losing. Emptied,
beggared, without missing an ounce of your own gold.

Then the Moment is time gain. Eternity retracts its lovely claws
and stalks out of sight, but never out of the house, aloof as a cat.
Yet it was here, wasn't it? You can't deny the lingering sting;
those wounds in your arm; those blooming beads of blood.

[Diane Tucker]