Road Works Poem by Jan Oskar Hansen

Road Works


The loose pebbles off the road I picked
were cold and unwilling, but as they
warmed in my palm they thawed and
when I opened my hand they were sand
of time and told a story of a future strand
washed by swells of seas not yet born.


Life lines in my hands are mere blinks
when measured by cosmic seconds, yet
worriedly I asked: “shall I not be there
and witness a birth? ” This silence, so
telling, is free of sentimentality, but it
whispered about blameless perpetuity.