Kids eat dirt, though they don’t know
that they have a limited time
to be infinite. This is okay with them:
tomorrow will take most of forever

to claw its way, second by second,
to us and start over again.
Mountains pile up on young tongues,
then worlds on their shoulders

as they, we, arc toward earth.

Children fill their mouths with dust; they cannot
know yet that is what they are. Specks,
small as seconds still adding up, of exquisite earth
on this titanic grain.

A minute, forever when you’re chewing sand,
is a grain of time, scratchy until it’s lost in the endless
tumble of uncountable flecks, smooth against the inflexible
glass, the whole forever slipping onward.

m.nicole.r.wildhood’s work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Atticus Review, Five and elsewhere. She currently writes for Seattle’s street newspaper Real Change and is at work on a novel and two full-length volumes of poetry. She also blogs at http://mnicolerwildhood.com