time & vines

I love these vine plants, these resilient pothos I’ve propagated in water and placed on the windowsill on either side of my desk. I love watching their progress. Tubular roots pushing down and inside the bottles, leaves extending and bending back toward the light. The thing that’s so disturbing about time is its invisibility. Of course we have seasons, and faces, but for day to day time-watching, I’m for plants. I lose track of what day it is often, but only for a moment. All the technology knows and reminds. If this were a poem, I’d tell the story of how when I was five, the teacher told my mother that I couldn’t tell time, couldn’t read a clock with hands. All of ours were digital. Time is the oddest, slipperiest thing. How much sleep did we get, how many hours until, how late for, how old, this series of agreements that increments and assignments we’ve made to portions of what we know to be “day” and “night” matter so much. Order our known lives. Real and not real. Time and money. Money may not be real but my landlord is, so what we call tomorrow there must be what we call a check. My philosophies don’t change that. But in this what I call minute, I can stew about that or I can look at the plants. Watch the light push through the translucent roots.