If we walked
at the speed of light
nobody would apologize
for arriving too early for dinner

at a neighbor's house
and our neighbors would all live further
apart, like on Jupiter and Mars,
and my grandmother

would have lived somewhere
past Pluto instead of Delaware.

Nobody would wear watches
and we would probably return
to time measured by work-axes
grown heavy, their increasing masses

making them useless,
telling us to stop,
and since we'd have no clocks
to measure time together

we'd have to decide on our own
when it was the right time
to go home for dinner
with our wives and children.