https://sweetlit.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Sonnenizio_and_Kalanchoe_Leaf_Study-Casey_L._Ford.mp3

Sonnenizio and Kalanchoe Leaf Study

When I do count the clock that tells the time,
its tiny, ticking heart counts back to me
a day in seconds vanished like the dew
that dies as sunlight burns it off a leaf
halted in time, posing in the dawn,
its broad, waxy face a pedestal
for countless dazzling drops of futile water
it will never get to drink.

And this clock’s hands
spin out of time to say, Count something else.
Look at your own eye and count the lashes,
one for every life lost in a time
when time is all there is and not enough.
Stop counting dewdrops. Study how the light
draws fractals in the bead, as minutes might.


Casey L. Ford is director of the Lamar University Writing Center in Beaumont, Texas, where she has also taught first-year composition and creative writing since 2015. She recently earned an MFA from Fairfield University, and her poems have been published in Rogue Agent, Delta Poetry Review, Ocotillo Review, Amarillo Review, Concho River Review, and Last Stanza Poetry Journal, the latter of which honored her with a 2022 Pushcart Prize nomination.

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