A poem about the passage of time that I wrote thirty years ago

(and just revised)

Small lines painted on graduated glass,
the measure-mark of a rainy season in the widening of a tree,
the quiet rests a half-note’s time,
a rectangle floating quietly above the index line — 
and now this, a measure of marked time,
becomes itself an occasion of moment,
with some of the same punctuation it brackets,
and some of its character,as though it holds more than mirror-looking within.

Or as if while driving,
you turned around and your hair pressed against the back of your
head as you looked at a grazing animal,
who doesn't care where you are heading,
      “as if there were a caring animal...”
as you sped toward a destination you have forgotten,
though you have some of the same accoutrements — 
the backpack on your floor traveled with you to Montana,
your socks have all been to Jordan —
and yet the animal is still grazing, "the same as it ever was."
Cows almost certainly possess the banality of permanence.