Laymen's Arrow of Time

One cannot curve space without involving time as well.  Thus time has a shape.
- Stephen Hawking


he identifies the clay bricks that build time and pats them
to soften and stretch their passing

by this he fingers the temporal fabric of which everyone feigns knowledge
and keeps count the wrinkles in it that so please him

his weight is to overhear the condolences passed from tree to yellowed leaf so he
does not pour out his minutes in buckets of replicate seconds

but, between, etches names of lovers and heights of hills to which he took them
i have squinted to read their elevations between our clock's tiniest notches

he snuffs toward the extravagance of our percolating tin coffee pot
and is sated to map the rippled burst of one leapt bubble

while he met me one morning with drawings of all the faces
the humming bird makes at our window

he said that only by his choosing does he hear the wind as singular
for that sonnet, he maintains, is best heard whole

and when he asks me which direction i best like to swim the river
between the place i taste the dryness of my wine

and the smoke resident in my cheese, i imagine what it is
to kiss with a mouth that knows so well its own directions