I can’t be fast as the filmed snake whiplashes.

I can’t be fast as the heron snaps.

I can be slow.

The child streaked from crying against its mother in the bus shelter

clutches the plastic chess-piece

picked from the complex’s dumpster.

Under a stoplight at night, someone’s son’s pimpled face glares red. It is so quiet,

a little down from here the roads may no longer intersect.

The sumac lamps

have flaked flameless.

In the import store I lifted a plastic sack

of red powder from Turkey, turned it hourglass-over,

put it back

still as the handful-sized heap of maple seeds

nestled by the engine block

all winter is now,

scooped out and scattered on the snow-crust

like chips of moon in

Antarctic ice.

Each moon-chip is a seed. No human will live

to see it flower. There is something in me so slow

it will be around even then.

But to know what that is

would be like seeing in this bucket’s disk of frosted ice

my reflection.