when things got out of hand
i pressed two fingers to my wrist,
and there a half-inch from the veins
i was reminded i am, still.

that beat is constant, intermittent,
faster for you and the Eucharist.
slowed with borrowed babies,
for that is someone else’s time

the blue-green channels doing their job
when i don’t want to do mine
remind me of that word vocation:
i did not choose this, and yet it is