The gardener starts his mower and sails over high hedges to mangle weeds. These images, in what's left of spring this year, meet with a flurry of jasmine blossoms. How it all goes together is a secret that calls for something unexplainable. He leaves his mower idling, weeds flattened, each with a little head stone. They have epigrams such as “A prickly personality that ended up pickled.”

Well as they say, that's the take-away, though sweet jasmine in the spring can be rather sad when the mower isn't chewing its cud. Spring this year is no more artesian than Bridalveil Fall, now gracing the driest Yosemite Valley in a hundred years. A hegemony of American hedges is being squashed beneath climate change.

There is some delight in permutations that arrive out of nowhere, winding round snakelike, suddenly remembered like a grape vine that has nothing to do with grapes. Or wine. They get squashed and, no use recalling the flight of a mower over bumble bee hedges. Squashed is on a par with the second law of thermodynamics, which has been misinterpreted for an indication of time, or rather for reaffirming its assumption.

Truthfulness is not automatic. A biography might be pursued with good intentions, especially if done by someone else, or maybe only if then. A well edged lawn passes through several hedgerows. And by the time it's done, it's taken for granted. It's obvious. Everything in its place, as though settled long ago.

And then comes the wind storm.

In a realm of percentages I speak. Floating over an ocean of bobbing dangles, fireflies, bagels and peaks. A good cook would stir it. With a wooden ladle of course. For the pressure.

I had a Frisbee once, with a quizzical dog on its purple label, head cocked to hear His Master's Voice. It became a celestial chandelier, hanging now from a rafter. Give it a little twist and hear the original kaleidoscope bits fall back into place.

The cook is thumping his bowl with a street beat, more eclectic than electric. And now that the real deal is a pomegranate with its little blood red seeds, here they come down the speedway, belching tales and talismans, dragging a skeleton key from the tail pipe, a trail of sparks rising off the pavement. Its sound flies diminuendo round the hairpin turn.

On the cusp of forever, I linger with daises and friendly crows. A phalanx of caterpillars. A creek bed of dry, monk-bald stones. In scarce details lies satisfaction.

The bumble bee visiting favorite flowers is playing scales on my piano. Things belong where they go.

Though, let's admit delight in finding a surprise. It will spring up, not unlike a laughing jack-in-the-box, bobbing to beat the band, perhaps an evil joker, pushed over the edge into sainthood. The ancient song resumes. It omits war stories, fantasies, recycled revelations. Amidst rising waters, it swirls in filaments of seaweed, snaking round the bald stones.

Independence? Consider how the moon orbits us. Together, our earth and moon orbit the sun. Our sun is but one of many that ride the swirl of our galaxy. A center for each of these is established for their motions, which are thus bound in cycles.

Time? In turn, depends on cyclic events. As in a heartbeat, or the ebb and flow of tides, or an orbit. Our orbit is a good benchmark. Measuring from that, we derive seconds, minutes, hours, all coming into focus in units that are orderly and regular.

Looking at a sundial, one might say this is self-evident.

When I was a kid, we didn't have a sundial. God the watchmaker took care of it, so everyone said. I never paid a moment's attention. Let others count them. Time pieces I've always regarded as basically a play on words. There is no time to come to pieces, or to piece back together. What is, what is not, neither exists nor does not exist. Chop it up? This is trying to serenade a sun dial. A melody is good for lifting the burden of tilling a field, to make time fly. The illusion is good for making all kinds of work mesh. Schedules can be co-ordinated. Notes can sound together in harmony with a time signature on the staff – Aye! The music of the spheres! Arguments that disfavor the illusion get abandoned in deference to what is self-evident.

To make a play on words, let's just say that I will bide my time.