Time Frames

Marie-Andree Auclair

Featureless flight over meridians
date line, more time zones
too boring to allow sleep.
At last, home.

My own bed, my feverish body
napping. Abruptly sleep decamps.
No use checking the time: The hands
on my analog clock overlap at 6:30
don’t say which.

I stumble to the window
maybe the city will tell.
But the pearl-colored sky
is dressed for either dawn or for dusk
and the scant traffic
shushed by snow, yields no clues.
Even the neighbours’ windows
are secretive, opaque
protecting sleep or seasonal vacancy.

Relief — at knowing where I am
one half of being oriented —
almost balances out my distress
at wondering when I am.

I want to know
which way the earth is turning
jump into day, or night.
Do I phone a friend and ask
what time is it? Do I go back to sleep
wait for the world to righten itself?
I feel ill-timed, almost queasy
a gnaw of hunger for orienting evidence.
I don’t want to choose, I want to
join the flock, breakfast or dinner

Marie-Andree Auclair’s poems have appeared in a variety of print and online publications in the United States, Canada and elsewhere. Some of these magazines comprise Apeiron, Gravel, Understorey Magazine, Eunoia, a and Spadina Literary Review. Her chapbook Contrails  was released by In/Words Magazine and Press/Ottawa. She lives in Canada.,and is working on her next chapbook.