MEAN/TIME: Poems

By Grace Bauer

Bauer’s newest collection is an exploration of time: how we perceive it and its passing, how we use language to describe the lived experience that time informs, and the transformations we undergo during its passing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
• Release date: Mar 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9780826357786

Grace Bauer

Grace Bauer is the author of four books of poetry, including Nowhere All at Once.

Book preview

ONE

Reality Check

Try to remember a time

when you did not count

on something being more

or less miraculous:

deep indigo of dusk, half-moons

glowing on your fingernails,

the dirt beneath your feet—

and in it, a tiny persistent flower

sprouting despite all odds.

On the corner a man

in a brown suit and fedora

looks like he’s waiting

for someone. You consult

the calendar in your purse

to be sure it isn’t you.

Try to remember if it’s time

to go or time to arrive.

If the man is a guardian angel

or a nemesis. A muse.

The world is made up

of the choices you make.

This may be one of them.

Conditional

And if it were only the trees performing their annual striptease.

Only the leaves, brown and brittle, scritching against your window;

only you staring out, your hands pressed against the cold glass.

If it were only that, and the lessening light, which fades like a dimming spot

on an empty stage, earlier and earlier, day by day, till night becomes the norm.

If it were only loss piling up like leaves, like debts that will never be paid back,

absences looming larger than the assets of all you own. Or might.

If it were only the ache, your own body revealing its wear, your dreams tethered

by the realization that dreams—if they are destinations—are not always reached.

If it were not that you imagine and remember, live life halfway between anticipation