Chidago Canyon Petroglyph, Detail
Stop Watch
The time will come
when you will be standing
on an open trail that was
named after someone who
contributed some unknown
treasure that might have
helped some unseen people
see the sun shining
you will be standing with me
in our later years, after we
zoomed through many days
we will look up, hearing engines
and you will explain to me that
the plane has already gone
out of sight, but the sound travels
slower, making its own hoorah
and I will put my head on your chest
to hear your reverberating heart
making plans to be with me
as we keep looking up for clues
____________
Susan Shea
Review by Michael T. Young
I love how beautifully and seamlessly the unseen plane in the sky and the sound of its engines become a metaphor for the heart and its plans, all insinuated by the gentle gesture of the speaker putting “my head on your chest.” Just this says so much about how our intentions for the future, somewhere out ahead of us, exist in an invisible region while we really only have the present, the here and now to live in. It also creates this wonderful sense of the vastness of sky becoming intimate: these people are out on a hike over long, winding trails through wooded hills, the sound of the plane expands the sense of their environment and yet that simple gesture of head to chest and hearing the heartbeat collapses all that vastness into an incredible intimacy. It’s quite beautiful.