Like Clocks

after Dali's "The Persistence of Memory"

My tree was bent long ago.
I have seen the kisses of clocks
come and go, come and go

until they melted into stone.
By sitting utterly still
I have learned that hearts

like clocks, when misused,
grow long faces twisted
into strange ecstasies

of time lost and forgotten.
Once unbreakable, now soft and piteous,
they search desperately for one another

yet cannot convene, eyes and hands
deliquesced by harsh words and weather.
Each clock is an elsewhere,

invariably different from any other;
but clocks like hearts tend to wither
further, drape themselves like sheets

over branches of trees and broken bodies.
They even strangle birds, infect
soft supine feathers with toxic rust.

The ocean has even forsaken them,
they shall be laid out to dry
in the sun forever. Brittle as death,

fossilized at an immovable time
when a heart like a clock
was broken.