Welcome to Burning Bright, a weekly podcast presenting poetry and prose from Passager.

This week, to commemorate the recent change for much of the country from daylight savings time back to standard time, some pieces about time.
 
Steve Matanle wrote a series of short poems while sitting on his porch every night around three a.m. Here are two of them. First Number XXXV.
 
5 a.m. The world
like a table at a séance.
The fog
silhouettes the trees,
haloes
the sleepwalkers
returning
from their journeys.
 
And Number XXXIX.
 
At 6 a.m.
the trees
are dissolving
in the fog
like musicians
falling asleep
on a train.
 
Two short poems about time from Steve Matanle from his book Nightbook.
 
Diana Anhalt lived in Mexico for almost 60 years before returning to the United States in 2010. Here, from her book Because There Is No Return, is her poem “Tiempo.” 
 
Return me to the boredom of my Mexican childhood, 
to drizzly afternoons spent staring out a window 
marking time, hankering for a parade, a crash, clamor 
of sirens, conspiracy of stoplights, impossible snow. 
 
Return me to the country that invented the hammock. 
Where Tiempo is only a watch brand, a journal, a word 
in a song. Where the mantra's manana. In such a place 
who minds the church bells? They ring at random. 
 
Traffic slows to skirt potholes, stray dogs, a charro 
on horseback. The sidewalk trumpeter plays taps at 1:00 p.m. 
Always unhurried, I opened the window to a flurry of bird-wing, 
a canvas of cloudscapes, scent of jacaranda. 
 
Today, impatience grabs me by the wrist, propels me out the door. 
My timepiece ticks louder. 
 
“Tiempo” by Diana Anhalt from her book Because There Is No Return.
 
Next, from Passager Issue 69, Jennifer Burd’s poem "Self Portrait Explaining a Calendar to the Future." She said the poem was inspired by a fascination with devices for measuring and keeping track of time and how they can be seen as metaphors for our lived lives.
 
You can make a life with this. 
The blank squares here, 
those are called “days” – 
but they include nights, too. 
You can tell because once a week 
you can open one of the boxes 
and find a moon inside. 
These squares can be written on – 
you can name them after things 
you need or want to do, like 
“make Dr. appt.” or “lunch w/ Bob.” 
Sometimes you’ll do those things 
and other times you’ll look 
back at them from another square 
wondering what you were thinking. 
When the sun comes up again 
you move to the next one 
like a piece in a board game. 
Now and then, a whole row 
of blank squares up ahead 
will make you smile and sigh.
They can’t be traded or given away
but on a flat hot summer afternoon 
you’ll think you’ve gotten 
two for one. They aren’t real 
days, I hope you see. They’re just 
patio bricks with all manner 
of weeds growing up in between. 
But they’re portable. Days that fit 
neatly in your purse or pocket. 
You can buy a collection 
in one-year, two-year, three-year, 
and perpetual. The light I want 
to see when I die? Row upon row 
of blank pages, laid out side-by-side.
 
Jennifer Burd’s poem "Self Portrait Explaining a Calendar to the Future."
 
Finally, one more poem about time, Section Two of Sarah Yerkes’ poem “Meditations on Time.” 
 
Time is amorphous
drifts hither and yon
like a contrail in the sky

or it is stubborn
marching inexorably 
into the unexplored future

often it’s rigid
cannot be bent
from one epoch
into another

spirits in this sphere
and those who have left
can’t make tears in Time’s web
to reach one another

the morning paper tells me
that Einstein was right
gravity does have waves

astonishingly, this means
that we can just now watch
two stars colliding
13,000,000 years ago

Five minutes writing time seems like a day,
Five minutes scrubbing floors can last forever.

Nowhere in books of physics have I read
that time can be elastic. It can act
as holder of a wisp of golden thread
or of a long, uninteresting tract.

That was Section Two of the longer poem “Meditations on Time” by Sarah Yerkes, from her book Days of Blue and Flame.

To buy Steve Matanle’s book Nightbook, Diana Anhalt’s book  Because There Is No Return, or Sarah Yerkes’ book Days of Blue and Flame, or to subscribe to or learn more about Passager and its commitment to writers over 50, go to passagerbooks.com. You can download Burning Bright from Spotify, Apple and Google Podcasts, and various other podcast apps.

For Kendra, Mary, Christine, Rosanne, and the rest of the Passager staff, I’m Jon Shorr.