Zen in the 76th Year

When is the time
in this world
when it is blank, reaching
the limits of the small,
the times between?
The microbes grow within microbes
lifetimes fill the
milliseconds between wingbeats.
Here we sit
talking with large
quivering bubbles of gas
encoded as furniture we share.
We are scaled
to speak of nothing else,
in our bordered, gated tribe,
through the holes in our masks.
It is less
than the language
of the solitary,
and perhaps the dead.