If Time Were a Slow Thing

If time were a slow thing a snake shedding skins, a lizard gradually wakening to its life in the sunlight; if it were a red bus dawdling through congested streets, or the swish of a cat's tail just before it pounces, then we could paint moments, embellish, or translate what each instant meant, build galleries for clocks but they would not be clocks they would be faces in a gallery of self-portraits, or we could simple shed our layers under a peeling sun.