Watch Closely

Absolute surrender corrupts
Absolution. The past is now,

The thisness of always, this sun
That the past lets me recollect

Without too much terror: I have
Pulled myself clear in time,

Where everything that happens means
Nothing ever happens again,

All gone and here because it's gone,
Clouds of dust by the gravel pit,

By the marshes, by the white lake,
By the mountains that were islands

When the lake was an ocean, when
Imagination was nowhere

To be seen: this afternoon, this
Sun, dust, grass, ice, this lake of was.