Once, it was feared that exceeding the speed of sound meant 
   a man might outfly his voice and strangle on his screams.

Not laughing, a woman tells me 
that the elusive entrance to 
a unicorn lair has been found
in North Korea. Only now, 
because their secrets are well-kept, 
have we learned that skeletons 
are being restored, beautiful 
as anything in paradise. 

Often, there are deceits disguised
so well for our desires they are
designed like myths: A magician, 
for television, once vanished
the Statue of Liberty by
turning a crowd of witnesses
so slowly that a country of
viewers surrendered to wonder.

Always, in the dictionary 
for easy dismissal, the list 
of synonyms grows long enough 
to seem countless, a collection 
that soothes our lovable longings.
Our taste for myth and quackery 
quickens our desire to embrace 
each promising, suggestive hope:

For instance, such trust is enough 
to pause me inside my office 
in this house, now refurbished, where
a priest once lived within a set 
of rooms so small anyone would
perceive them as a suite of cells.
Always, he had terriers, two 
at a time, and, at last, cancer 

no amount of praying could cure.
By then, a mile to the east, ground
had been broken, foundation laid
for the reconstruction of faith.
The rectory, vacant a year, 
went dank and mildewed, cubicles 
of shadows. The discarded church 
became a clinic, its large lot 

a gallery of patients’ cars,
the near rows for the handicapped 
and pregnant, a space fire-lane wide
for vans that transport the helpless.
In this small office transfigured 
by students, I put aside work 		
for the leisure of thankfulness, 
keeping fear and doubt priest-secret.

Listen, speed and velocity, 
though often used as synonyms, 
are not the same. Speed is travel
through time; velocity includes
the shift in position. Divide
your changes by the years it has
taken you to make them to learn
time is motion with memory.

Someone, after research, has learned
that the most common noun is Time. 
Someone else, today, has written
to the paper claiming to know 
how God prioritizes prayers,
responding from innocence to 
brutality symbolized by
children and Russia’s neo-czar.

He estimates five billion prayers 
are mouthed per day, Time, happily, 
a concept different for God. 
Or Einstein, who declared that time, 
as we approach the speed of light,
will slow until, after decades,
we will arc back younger than
grandchildren as if we have gained

the limitless advantage of 
a now-shaken God. Consider,
now, that rocket flight. In the months 
before he died, my father, past
ninety, remembered only what 
he had seen first-hand, loneliness 
his last lesson by example
how we disappear into Time.