The World Must Be Beginning
Gabriel Meek

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because dried begonias are rattling
and the handprints of drowned men
are sinking quicker than the trays
of space can empty. I’ll ask you
to fill them, those impressions.

Turtles are swimming in chlorine
so these beaches are not beaches,
and words are spinning like riddles
lost in syncopated paradiddles.
Your voice is a splintered harvest.

You are here, and me, and time
is only dollars given, and we
do not care to be the richest.
This story is far from over,
but we must begin the next one.

There might be a faulty tomorrow
but we will find it
            and lace it with ribbon.