Lynn Levin reads 'To the Present': 'Behind in all things'

To the Present

Jump in the air.

Simplest tense.

You are,

but what you are

I scarcely know

since you keep

popping in and out

of existence.

Rarely have I lived

in your opportunity —

but more often

in old sorrows, new worries.

I stand before your conveyor belt

like Charlie Chaplin

in Modern Times,

behind in all things

late and quickly.

Hangliders and lovers

say I should seize you —

but for your is,

there's nothing at all.

Yet often my courage falters,

and, like you, I am

a terrible waster of hours.

— By Lynn Levin

Copyright © 2009 by Lynn Levin.

Levin, Lynn. Fair Creatures of an Hour, Loonfeather Press, 2009.

Lynn Levin is the author of Fair Creatures of an Hour, a Next Generation Indie Book Awards finalist in poetry; Imaginarium, a finalist for ForeWord Magazine's Book of the Year Award; and the translator of Birds on the Kiswar Tree, a collection of poems by Peruvian poet Odi Gonzáles, forthcoming from Latin American Literary Review Press. Lynn Levin's poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Boulevard, Artful Dodge, Think Journal, and other places. Locally, her poems have appeared in Press 1, New Purlieu Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Wild River Review, and Apiary. Lynn Levin teaches at Drexel University and the University of Pennsylvania.