Revisionist Poetry – “The Quiet Architecture of Passing” – Uncertain Sculptures, v.3

Beside the river I make my little cathedrals
from broken stones and patient hands,
not to defeat time,
but to hear it breathe.

The current slides near me
with its soft, unanswering wisdom,
while I choose each stone by touch,
its cool weight, its scars, its fit.

Sunlight settles on my back.
The bank is hushed.
I bend, I lift, I balance,
and for one trembling instant
the impossible agrees to stand.

What I love is not the tower,
but the almost of it—
the lean, the hold, the half-second
before the world remembers itself.