Ink Tea Stone Leaf

As the pendulum swings from the one to the other,
I grasp at that brass as if all that I know
is the stillness ahead and the moment behind me
when all that I knew was the stillness I lived,
and the roar of the air by my ears and the terror
of gravity’s hideous pull is a dream.

At the end of an arc where the balance of forces
is neutral, the balance of thought is untroubled
and I can indulge in forgetting the troubles
disturbing the water, my mind as serene
as the moon in ukiyo-e prints of the ocean,
the way that I always believed it would be.

As the pendulum falls it ascends, as I rise
I descend, as I’m carried across from the near
I arrive at the close, and the radical shift
is constrained by the spoke of the wheel, the radius
tracing its moderate path through the wilderness,
heavy the weight that sustains our return.

At the start of an arc where the balance of forces
is tilting, the balance of thought is upset
by the gathering tumult; I cling to my brass
and indulge in the clarity lost in the fall,
a beautiful lie I am sure I can tell
for as long as the grandfather clock remains wound.