when everything was new

when everything was new
"and there was evening, and there was morning—the second day."

i clock out and free-fall
through cracks in my consciousness
and tiny chasms in my will to live this way

i find myself awake,
if not always alive
while everything is shaking,
wasting time, wasting time

in the spring in the morning on the banks of the willamette,
when the sun first caught sight of the rippling shallows,
and people learned to fish
to the poetry of birds in migration
--their songs, their formations, their
flightiness-- i tell my friend on the cellphone:
'i'm on my way to your part of the world'