About a Boy Stirring Jam

A wooden spoon for stirring jam,

Dripping sweet tar, while in the pan

Plum magma’s bubbles blather.

For someone who can’t grasp the whole

There’s salvation in the remembered detail.

What, back then, did I know about that?

The real, hard as a diamond,

Was to happen in the indefinable

Future, and everything seemed

Only a sign of what was to come. How naïve.

Now I know inattention is an unforgivable sin

And each particle of time has an ultimate dimension.