Give Us This Day
WANTED: Artist and Muse in search of time.
If you have hands full of time
and you have already cleaned out
your garage, closet, and underwear drawer,
dusted the top of your fan blades,
decluttered, disinfected and feng-shuied
your living spaces, watched all reruns
of CSI, NCIS, SVU, Seinfeld and Gunsmoke,
please consider sending the hours
you have no use for.
Will pay cash for time in any denomination:
split seconds, half-a-secs, a few minutes,
happy hours, twilight time, time saved by a bell,
infinity (if you’re a mystic), dog years,
a coon’s age, donkey years, overtime, months on end,
months of Sundays, once in a blue moon time.
From the Catholics I am happy to receive
Holy Days of Obligation, Holy Weeks, First Fridays,
Holy Thursdays, Ash Wednesdays,
All Saints and All Souls Days,
the Liturgical Seasons and any Ordinary Time.
I am open to epochs, points in time, downtime,
first and last times, spacetime,
kingdom come time, end times.
Please deliver in a bottle sent via any ocean
(they are connected, as all life is)
intend deeply and with fervent desire
that it arrive at La Jolla Shores
where I will pick up at low tide.
Let this be your prayer:
The bottle is arriving, the bottle is arriving,
the bottle is arriving.
Soon I will fetch it
and turn it into a poem, perhaps,
or a song, or a symphony of words
that will find its way to you
and lift your tender heart.
This is the circle we are.
Unbroken.
Unbridled.
Undaunted.
Unlimited.
Thank you for your time.
Jan Phillips
March 26, 2020
