Untitled (Lincoln) Poem by Ryan Van Winkle

"Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time. If there be an object to hurry any of you, in hot haste, to a step you would never take deliberately, that object will be frustrated by taking time; but no good object can be frustrated by it."
- Abraham Lincoln



Time is nothingness
and this should allow
me to take any transport

I want. And I will not
hurry in hot haste nor
will I look to time

as a challenger,
or to you who rushed
to that train

thinking you were late.
The moon was falling,
tripping over your bags,

and I was wanting
to say you were not late,
that the train would come

again and again
like a dream of falling,
like a starfish

regrowing its arms.
And my arms and time
are nothingness and that

should allow you to take
them in your own time,
deliberately, like boarding

a train you know you want,
with a solid name, a destination
stamped on the front.