Time’s Made with No Loss of Time

Valéry, hundred

Years ago or so,

Translated—Today

No one cultivates

What cannot be made

Quickly. Not true then,

Untrue even now.

More people more speed,

But cultivation,

Like evolution,

Like a watershed,

Has many eddies

Where things swirl slowly.

Not doing something—

Now that’s a virtue,

And slow craft’s okay.

Nice things do get made.

But tin and plastic

And one-hit wonders

Of streaming fragments

Foam from Earth also.

Close to four billion

Years spun downstream now,

This moment’s making.

Somewhere, a small child

From Generation

No Attention Span

Labors days and days

To craft a cheat code

Or a dancing meme

For some collective

Enterprise that takes

Near endless patience.