Mary Alexandra Agner is the author of The Doors of the Body from Mayapple Press, 2009. Her poetry is forthcoming in Goblin Fruit, Science Editor, and Naugatuck River Review. All her life she's observed the universe and written about it. She can be found online at www.pantoum.org.

World Enough, and Time

     by Mary Alexandra Agner

Give me the time, I've world enough

in my imagination. Give me the clock

so I may drink its seconds down,

metabolize, regurgitate, reverse,

collect the causal innards,

string them out on fishing line

as  bait, reel in the chrono-coelecanth

and breed them into ache and majesty,

moments when inspiration has its way

with me, deathbed vigil minutes longer

so no regret remains unsaid,

first time in love, in lust, on the window ledge,

over and over, new each time.

Repeat, re-lust, re-linger.

What herb can purge the pulse from me,

the high arc of the pendulum

that all my life has pounded in my blood?

Copper mechanicals or monolithic stones

or calendars of feathers and of fear:

they all will sound upon my final hour.

© 2009 Mary Alexandra Agner