by Rachel Trousdale

Everyone is wrong about eternity. It ebbs
and flows. Think about the distance
between the earth and the sun; then scale that
to Jupiter; to Pluto; well—that is as the distance
between the belly of a snake and the crumbling
brown dirt it slides upon in the face of the distance
between us and even Proxima Centauri. Think
about the time that has passed since we first
walked upright; since scale first
lapped scale—those heavy-skulled reptiles,
the earliest fish. Even the air
was of another substance then. All our many seas
were then one sea. Even that was only
the time it takes to pause at the stop sign
on an abandoned midnight road on a long drive
(south all night through the pine woods, past the farms,
another hour, another four hours before
you can stop to sleep) next to the time since our
hot liquid earth first started cooling.
How long have I loved you? How long
have we loved these children? How
long will anyone know these words? As long
as men can breathe or eyes can see we can keep
trying, keep pushing, keep making
our many mistakes. If I keep driving
one more hour (as the January night extends
toward that distant little January dawn) I think
you can get us home.

Rachel Trousdale is a professor of English at Framingham State University. Her work has appeared in The Yale Review, The Nation, Diagram, and a chapbook, Antiphonal Fugue for Marx Brothers, Elephant, and Slide Trombone. Her latest scholarly book is Humor, Empathy, and Community in Twentieth-Century American Poetry. She is @rvtrousdale on Twitter and Bluesky. Her website can be found at racheltrousdale.com.