the intersection of deep time and the ephemeral in oceantic

I want to be buoyed by salt and rind of kelp. know why it is natural to name your knives, seek the colors humans have not yet named,  and remember to look for moon-glow on every leaf and sea grape.  A hundred crystallized images and moments in these pages, Nezhukumatathil celebrates  falling in love and being in grief in this world, with the nature around us, our lovers and ourselves as we watch our surroundings crumble around us and ponder the meaning of deep time.  The ephemeral  juxtaposed with monuments of permanence as the fleeting paper petals of poppies stand in front of the Taj Mahal. And "if you try to catch/ a butterfly, a thousand/ filaments of feather/ will dissolve into dust.." (52) Because "There/ are not enough jam jars to can this summer sky at night." (15)

Through out these pages, through the stringing of such precise and precious words we are drawn into  intimate relationship with the natural world, and what it is to meditate upon it, learn from it, hold onto it, and let it go.  From the museum of glass flowers to the tapestries of captive unicorns people have attempted to capture the ephemeral, memorialize it, and hold it even as the earth burns from beneath its surface in central Pennsylvania since 1962 and will continue to do so.

Nezhukumatathil oscillates between considering the present, with her tender vignettes of her relationship where she cherishes simple and ordinary moments and the acknowledgement of deep time: 

"Six hundred sixty-three/ years from now this planet will be granted an extra second (44) 
"Giant tortoises and compact discs last one hundred years. /  In one million years, Los Angeles will move forty kilometers/ north because of plate tectonics....One billion years: one ocean born./  The time it takes for the last waxy smudge of me to stop loving you." (22)
We land in a present to consider what is our impact, how are we living fully, how do we leave our mark and how might we take the invitation to learn from the hum of the world around us: "If you still want to look up, I hope you see/ the dark sky as oceanic, boundless, limitless-like all/ the shades of blue revealed in a glacier, Let's listen' how this planet hums with so much wing, fur, and fin." (29)  What is the intersection of notions of time-that one written by celestial bodies and those marked by human existence?  How do we learn to see ourselves in relation to other living beings, to name our collective heartbeats- a quiver of cobras, a maelstrom of salamanders, an audience of squid.  How do we learn to grieve better the ones we have lost in our own short lives

"I want to pull off my arm,/ or maybe just a finger, or three, so I don't point/to the playground where our blue dog jumped/through the row of swings that still squeak/their mild annoyance from each slobbery leap they endured.  Maybe I just want to rid my self/ of knuckles so I can't knock on the door you now share/ with another"  (54)

And learn to grieve together what is slipping away forever...
I believe in wanting too wear only/dust, hear only dust,  taste only dust./  I believe in wanting to touch nothing/ and wanting nothing to touch you."