Time Zones

Sandi Stromberg

November 26, 2021

1.

Goodbye time watching.

The kind the Greeks 

call chronos.

Think chronic, 

chronicle, chronology.

Day after day time. 

Eight to five,

one-hour lunch, 

continuous, unstoppable,

deadline time. The kind we 

quantify for birthdays, 

anniversaries, the years

between the dashes. 

Birth—death.

How we count 

the minutes, hours, days,

that pass with no word 

from a lover, a child, 

a parent, a friend. 

2.

I’m learning to live in kairos.

So un-American, this other Greek word 

for uncountable time 

without English derivations. 

No defining word to capture the ineffable 

intervals when one side-steps 

the frenetic pace to enter 

a beckoning flow, lose 

oneself in a poem, drift 

in a Chopin nocturne,

or merely

contemplate 

silence.

Sandi Stromberg has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize and twice for Best of the Net (2020, 2021). Her poetry is forthcoming or has appeared recently in MockingHeart Review, The Ocotillo Review, San Pedro River Review, Purifying Wind, The Ekphrastic Review, Texas Poetry Calendars, Snapdragon, Enchantment of the Ordinary, and translated into Dutch for Brabant Cultureel and Dichtersbankje (Poet's Bench) in the Netherlands.