SAL/ON

A Blog of Seattle Arts & Lectures

“Gears of Time, Cogs of Life” by Finnegan Fant

Gears of time, cogs of life

home is the trees rushing by as I speed

down a mountain, the scent of pine sap

as I leave the ground, the shocks of a downhill bike absorbing force as I slam

back down to earth.

Home is my dad coming home

after months on a halibut schooner

released after all that time

from that amalgamation of thousands of cold, cruel hooks.

Home is the taste of chilies

carving burning trenches down my throat.

Home is the red heat of a forge

the blue spark of a welder.

Home is the is the sound of a soft Seattle rain.

Home is both still and in constant motion

home is not one place

it is constantly reshaping as I live

life, the grease of the ever-grinding gears time.


Finnegan Fant, of Nathan Hale High School, read this poem to open our 2020/21 Journalism Series event with Patrick Radden Keefe on Monday, May 10, 2021. Written during the 2019/20 school year with WITS Writer-in-Residence Matt Gano.

Posted in Student WritingWriters in the SchoolsJournalism Series