Changes of Season

Flatland, no weather here, but mud
that goes from feet to sea and sky
in sticky waves, slow-breathing sands,
and salty-channel mazes, silted up
with all the human dust of cities,
drawn to this coast by edgy gravity
and left to sink as proof of us.

What conscience builds us houses here,
this losers' ground, an unfit place
for anyone not damaged, scarred
by cataloguing, damned by language?
But silence solves the howling,
The fixed echoes of the city, anchored
In the grey caves and folds of mind.

All these days can never be arranged,
they stretch behind and forward,
A single line of time, smoothed down
To flatten out the anger and to save,
To overwhelm and overcome the noise,
The resonance of life accelerating,
The victory of fractions over time.