When There Is Impulse and Time

What gentle echoes,
half heard sounds
there are around here.
.
You place yourself in
such relation you hear
everything that’s said.

Take it or leave it.
Return it to a particular
condition.

Think
slowly. See
the things around you,

taking place.
.
I began wanting a sense
of melody, e.g., following
the tune, became somehow
an image, then several,
and I was watching those things
becoming in front of me.
.
The you imagine locates
the response. Like turning
a tv dial. The message,
as one says, is information,
a form of energy. The wisdom
of the ages is “electrical” impulse.
.
Lap of water
to the hand, lifting
up, slaps
the side of the dock –

Darkening air, heavy
feeling in the air.

A Plan
On some summer day
when we are far away
and there is impulse and time,
we will talk about this.
— Robert Creeley, Massachusetts

Why do we wait for someday, when today will do? We dream of places far away, when we have far less on our to-do lists, when we might finally slow down enough to catch up with each other. When we might catch up with ourselves. Life moves quickly—too quickly for such things as pondering and poetry. So they say.

The beauty of poetry is in how the reader interprets a jumble of words just so, transforming them into something powerful or mundane, emotive or passionless, joyful or melancholy. Robert Creeley set these words free and, like life itself, we make of his poetry what we will.

Maybe, it serves as a reminder to think slowly. To see the things around us taking place. To use this time more impulsively. To be present for those who are here, now.