Running in Circles

–For the marriage of Jack and Lisa

How long can one hand hold another?

How long before fingertips

grow numb, the joints all sweaty

and the hand loses its grip?

And when the hand reaches this limit,

how many gestures will it make

before it lifts a sleeve to ponder

what time it is, what time will take?

Trees growing ring by ring and slowly,

knots anchoring the limbs, light spun

down through the branches, throwing patterns

of hoops and arcs across the lawn,

sparrows leaping into orbit,

looping and hooking in the air

like everything that’s round, returning,

is loving, patient, lasting, dear.

Even the clock running in circles,

losing again and again the hand

it reaches back to, holds in marriage,

giving this ring until time ends.

Michael T. Young

From Transcriptions of Daylight, Rattapallax Press,
© 2000; originally printed in Feelings.  Reprinted
by permission of the author.