Time flows from a future that does not
                yet exist through a present moment
                without duration into a past that no
                longer is.
                                                 −Augustine

The leaves suspend.  They hover through this trance
of the pond ice.  Cold’s slab holds time from ending
an autumn caught in winter, chilled to a dance
of leaves strewn still.  I watch two seasons blending

a tree line’s time of shedding, as ice sheds
time from the melt of shapes, crisp-edged above mud −
saw-toothed elm edge, these pecan arrowheads,
palmated jags of maple, heartshaped redbud.

Leaves spill through stillness, stilled into their spilling.
I’ve often wanted such pure being, caught,
as budding green crimps into brown, fulfilling
years’ cycles I’ve circled, wider than thought.

I gaze as though Augustine’s God communed
in solitude before forever’s pool
as all time’s scenes remain like leaves, marooned
each in each crystal moment.  Through the cool

falling of rain shivering into snow,
seasons return as through a trance’s span.
A saint’s thought holds eternity’s tableau,  
a pool unclouding as it clouds again.

Minute by minute, sun’s arc lifts to noon.
Light angles, slanting through a pond’s held glow
of restless lapping, lapsed.  Bright speed falls soon,
slowing for me, floating as light’s lulled flow.

I try to clear this feeling’s spell away.
My breathing frosts an air where leaves once swirled.
Boots crunching ice, I walk into the day  
of the continually dissolving world.