The Innisfree Poetry Journal

www.innisfreepoetry.org

by Oliver Rice

EXCEPTING TIME AND SPACE

In the park behind the library

it is a pleasant afternoon.

Winona and her new friend Harmon,

a junior, on the debate team,

have taken a bench out of the sun.

Each has a pad and pencil.

They are drafting a postulation.

A proclamation. A manifesto.

It is true, they have concurred so far,

true that other premises may be true,

but it is tenable that all things,

all events or circumstances,

existing or conceivable,

excepting time and space,

issue from the primal matter;

tenable, as well, that each of the elements

is invested with traits that are invariable

and with a purpose and a will that are unrelenting,

including potentials for interaction with other elements;

and tenable, therefore, that the periodic table 

is profoundly, absolutely amoral.

They gaze, now, upon the habitat,

awaiting implication.