Dave Bonta's "Deep time" is only a few lines long, but it stretches across an enormous span. It opens on a morning of "green water," a clear, cool, almost underwater image of stillness. Then comes an "agate knife," which suggests a stone tool from the distant past. Calling it "the first barber" is a playful touch: it imagines the earliest person who ever cut hair or shaved with something sharpened from rock, and it makes ancient history feel oddly ordinary and human.
The last lines turn personal. The speaker says the morning "stayed so long" that "we" let tomorrow go. Judging by the title, this is a kind of deep time felt in a single moment, when the present grows so wide that the future stops mattering. The mood is dreamy, absorbed, and quietly content. There's no worry here, only a willingness to stay put. The speaker seems to feel connected both to a companion and to the long chain of people who came before.