365.25/100

--This is my hundredth post!

1.

These things take a full year—

these words that take so many

revolutions

of the earth in their
slow utterance,

These half-formed thoughts
spinning dim

within us

as the pictures
on the calendar
on the wall

change

and the angle of light
from the window

swings

and emotions become

hardened

like a chrysalis
within us

without easy breaking points
without sure signs when some

forthcoming

enlightenment

will finally arrive

and we are within
this process

pulled in

and cemented over

our selves

spinning like the triangular
centers of rotary engines

each revolution

of us

bringing alteration, understanding

coming

like the accretion of molecules

in an ionized liquid

like the travel of electrons

from cathode to anode

like the insects we
allude to when the topic of

metamorphosis

comes up

in an idle conversation near
the elevators as the workday
concludes.

2.

These things take a full year—

and often longer

though I will say a year
for the sake of strong
detail and a concrete time

period

to consider

and what is a year
after all

but a circular journey

upon a ship we can neither guide
nor disembark from

and all these changes

are rhythms

the changes

themselves

hazing the linear idea
of things we like to cling to

often

adding up to nothing

so that only

our own perception
and the grouped perceptions
of our peers

and the agreed-upon
myth of history

are changed

or rather

edited and updated for
the expediency of the
hour.

3.

It takes a year, it seems—

for we have been myopic

and the view down from
our winged heads

floating

so high above anything
real and tangible

so efficiently removed
from the events
of the day

has been dim

and we have not seen ourselves

not clearly or often as we
move about and discharge
the duties of the day

and our blindness has lengthened
these shadows

and the shadow hands have held us

taught in their grasp
and unmoving

for these many spent-out days

and we have been as inchoate and
unknowing as dead things

helpless against all the movement
without

heedless of all the motion
within

but we have now come awake

struggling free of these imagined
arms, really our own fear and
incomprehension

bursting out of the cocoon we have
built from discharged elements

and spent molecules

of our own

obsolete emotions

and now, though time makes
no more sense than it ever did

we begin to understand

for just one moment
before the unending chronology
of years spins up again

for each day ends a year

each day moves from

someday

to

once

just as we all move outward
into time and its vagaries

hoping for enlightenment

or perhaps

something almost as good.