“There will be time,” the poet
once said, “for all the works…”
and I believe him
when confronted with you —

All energy and motion, no
still life,
(grasping at vectors like straws)
never sleeping.

And then I think of instants,
time and what another poet
said; something about open
doors and platonic forms

and I wonder what you’re thinking.

I’ve been thinking about dust
and definitions; the little things
that compose a day like this
for you.  And I’m reminded

of something the poet might have said,
when weighing his options, “…
that to fly,” he didn’t say,
“is to simply not fall.”

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My notes have this as 1995 and I did write this as a birthday present for a friend and co-worker at the time.  I didn’t think much or anything of it until I found a copy of it in a book one day by accident a few years later.  This is not the version I gave to her, as I’m too much the tinkerer to not rework something if the opportunity is there.