David Cheezem

An Essay on Time

1
Having done nothing, I have done nothing wrong,
but how is it that I carry judgment
inside, that I define my life as moments
staring at lichen, in summer, on a rock
imagining the silent rhythm of wet
and dry-- fungus holds moisture, algae holds place?

Taste is a unit of time. This poem will fail
unless I find the right word for lichen time.
Coconut chai swirls easily across my tongue,
a quiet spike of flavor, then the lingering
glow. Coconut and cinnamon balanced
until the moment dies, becomes aftertaste.

2
Adding sugar to corn flakes wasn’t wrong
in a moral sense, but was it sound judgment?
And the accumulation of those moments,
that slow, sugary sedimentary rock
of choices made, settled in the milk’s wet
wave over the tongue – settled as if a place?

I tell you that stone is fleeting, just as taste
is fleeting. There is no time for failure;
there is only time. There is only balance,
one moment that springs into the present time,
and the aftertaste of sipped beer lingering,
or tea, or chocolate: time defined on the tongue.

3
If you speak slowly, hold your tongue for moments
on the roof of your mouth, shape the ‘L’ of “place”
the word loses meaning. How does this simple stone-
like feeling compare to taste? Would it be wrong
to say time dissolves from meaning? From judgment?
The way lichen time is dry time, then wet?

Lichen can taste the sky, licking as with tongue,
nutrients in the atmosphere. This slow taste,
this patient satisfied hunger, lingering
years, through dry sleep, wet awake, cannot fail.
Failure is of a moment. With slow time
choices, if you have them, fall into balance.

4
Have I lost my balance, suspended in wet
time, like nutrients dissolved, watery moments-
a-numerical time? Is this where judgment
hides? Does judgment need drought to find place?
Where in solution is there right and wrong?
Is dry time moral time, numbered in sand and rock?

One moment dry, one wet, lichen time balanced:
Without dry: no time; without wet: no time. Tongue,
like lichen, waits. Taste is a unit of time.
Without one the sliver just before taste –
Sliver of what? Here is where the poem fails.
And yet I feel some confidence lingering.

5
What waits? What holds? What stands stable? The rock
only lingers. The rock dissolves in the slow wet
withering of rain, snow, wind. Nothing is wrong
in lichen time. “Wrong” is too fast for moments
lasting uncountable years, held in place.
No. Not “held.” Nothing holds in time sans judgment.

Radiation in the atmosphere lingers,
accumulates in lichen, tears the balance,
kills one cycle. What lingers is failure.
There: Do you sense it? Lingering on the tongue?
In the air? On the rock? History, a taste
of what is numbered, of what is dry, of time.

6
And of what is wet? How could taste measure time
without both? First, dry. Then, taste. Then the lingering
moisture, the memory dissolving in taste,
cinnamon, sugar, cardamom, in balance –
waves washing over an eager, speechless tongue,
then falling away. Alleviation fails.

The word is “resignation” – for lichen time.
This is what we learn. This is what lingers.
This is the time that exists the moment taste
dries from the tongue, the time of long, slow balance.
The lichen, dry, dormant, waits, just as the tongue
turns from taste to speech. But speech, not time, can fail.

7
This place, rock. This judgment
where words like “wrong” fail, linger
like taste balanced in time,

wet, dry on the tongue
between moments, stalled: resignation tongue.