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Time is such a strange thing, she says,

and I know she means how surely it cannot

have been 45 years ago that we danced

in the high school gymnasium, her in her

Vanderbilt perfume and me in my powder

blue tux, and not all the cute quantum things

time has learned to do during the interim

of our lives, the gyrations time makes under

the pull of gravity, or the way time can tie

the cherry stem of a wormhole into a knot

with its tongue that might let us step back

 

into that pre-prom restaurant and decide

not to order the rabbit in wine sauce. She

has, it seems, lived her life closer to the speed

of light than I, so I look to see if there are,

in fact, signs that she is slightly younger,

and think I do count a few fewer wrinkles

around the eyes, though the eyes themselves,

I can tell, have seen things—Einstein’s lightning

strikes, say—not from the platform where I

only stood waving, but taking life on, bolt

by bolt, from the front of a speeding train.

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