from Workers of the Hours # 2 » New Zealand Poetry

I pulled out, blind
on my left, condensation
on windows on the passenger
side, cobwebs
and night dew on the rearview
mirror— pulled into traffic

and didn’t care:
if it is algorithms
we base decisions on
I hadn’t factored out
as far as Pluto
contracted with one of the moons
of Saturn relative Sirius

but I pulled out blind
on my left confident
there would be no oncoming
traffic

and when I got to the junction
of the Graveyards
and Rubbish Station
visibility was poorer
again
with dawn sun glare
over the peninsula
in the salt-whitened glass.

And I paused
then, not really checking,
as I would normally, coming
to a stand-still, at an intersection
of age, parental expectations,
low-paid worker of the hours;
all too knowing of the feeling
of Art at the nozzle, always,
waiting completion, commencement,
waiting that I abandon
travel through these forty
waged sections
of 60 minutes, and I coasted, in 2nd,
across the
oncoming
flow, stupid, as
the patterns are wholly
different
and unpredicible with repair
and rebuild
of the quake damaged
roads, buildings, and

that seen, in many areas,
do not appear much different
but as you focus in,
like DNA spirals crumbling
taking years
to be reported
on the surface
like broken bits rattling
inside an old alarm clock
—the big springs work,
but eventually the little, stiff
invisible cracks, and unrepairable
microtears will fcuk its timing up.

I cari
-ried that moment
in which I pulled onto the
main highway
without stopping
to wind down the passenger
window, all day, for days,
into this poem.

thinning hair, thickening there,
candle burning dimmer.
And more bright.
Less alert, more alive.
Ambition loosened off.
But tightened
where it works.
Minimum owe, maximum awe,
near complete release,
Time evolved,
like growing beards
you put up with
that worst part,
avoid the mirror, early years
yet, Evolution,
you coliseum
of Societal perfections.