ON THE ROUNDNESS OF THINGS by Evelyn Cole

ON THE ROUNDNESS OF THINGS
by Evelyn Cole

Time is round, I've noticed.
Every spring two red-tailed hawks
return to their condos in Eucalyptus Three
to hatch and raise one or two more.
Perhaps it's their offspring who return—
hard to tell unless you're a bird of prey.

Sunflowers appear every summer.
Unbidden, unplanted, they climb walls
till they reach sunlight
burst into roundness
and then topple over and die.

Clouds tend to be round
like baby faces
and flowers, especially sunflowers,
like the sun itself
as round as it gets.

The earth is round, too, I hear.
Like a human life, it takes a while
to get all the way around.
Look at a baby learning how to walk.
What joy, trust, faith, exuberance!
Strike up a band and watch her dance.

Follow him through the decades
traveling round this earth.
He may be the man in Rhode Island
who sells his fourteen-room mansion,
saying, "Time to put away childish things,"
and moves into an Arizona yurt.

Or she may be the woman on her deathbed
surrounded by preying relatives
who says when the family follows the lawyer elsewhere,
"I don't think I believe in God anymore."

She rolls her round eyes.
"You don't know how long
I've wanted to tell someone that,"
she says to her friend.
And then, with a toddler's smile,
she closes her eyes, sighs, and then dies.

Or he may be the man who scoffed at love
from age fifteen on,
believed only in heresies or conspiracies
until, at age sixty-four, he forgave his mother for being boring
and saw the face of God.

Meanwhile, babies arrive
and guns fire off rounds
to round out
the roundness of things.