Schrodinger’s Indeterminacy

Two tourists pass in a crowded bus.
The hairs on their bare arms touch,
for a moment meshing and warm,
then not, the door of the bus
already closed with a thud and a hiss,
a fragment in history, a swiftness
receding. That flash-point when
the future brushes against the past-
we notice it only after. Too late.
Now is already over; if
we stop to look, it’s gone.

The heart in my chest—in bed
at midnight I shudder to its thump.
A-gain, it repeats, A-gain,
the iambic beat ending at
the instant of assertion. Showing up
only as one in a trail of alpha sparks
tracking through the corridor of
memory’s cloud-chamber. Never
on my bus trip will that again
happen again.

Luci Shaw