Time Lapse Time
  
     by Mimi Ferraro


Outside window, clouds ripple wave sky.
He slips into the bedroom silently turns off switch.
On monitor, flash sequence: seed pods burst, roots
seep hungrily in heaved earth, tendrils break pebbly surface.
Image repeats same tremble dance over and over;
so dark in the room; sweat seams sheets.    So dark.
Fingertip spark bruises skin.   On screen, shoots instantly ripen, 
bloom, collapse, decay.   Brief close-up: febrile leaf displays
eyelash, brittle wing.    Blanket twists.   Nights hiss
new vocabulary: mean whispers, strangled gasp.   Broken  
nursery rhyme.   Outside window clouds ripple wave 
Can’t stop watching      mind flickers blue cathode blue.