Contained Time

I am immersed, caught in time that at
moments is as clear as glass, a shaft
of flashing life wherein I see my young
mother, long before the flight at Kittyhawk,

before my father’s wounds in Verdun,
the births of my children, and funerals where
I spoke to the grieving, my son falling from
the second story window.

All of it. I see what I had been told of
before I came to be, and how my demise
will be taken in stride by those remaining.
I feel my middling triumphs and swamping losses.

It humbles understanding that which felt so
important and bloated me with pride,
was no more than the dropping of a
leaf in fall. I am dusted with feelings.

Perhaps it is, that feelings remembered,
is the fairer description of life itself. We
are bundled by the music of being, skinned
over by time, tumbled by doing.

When it all floats in, amazement follows.
How can it all have been, we wonder? How
could I have done such wonderful and terrible
things? What do I do with this contained time?