Do we wear watches
or surround ourselves with clocks
to rein in our unruly
perception of time passing
“Oh heavens! Just look at the time!”
we say to an old friend
with whom we have been
immersed for fifty years in fifty minutes.
Even battery operated quartz clocks
can produce a metronomic beat
if we listen hard enough
but a pendulum grand father
case clock cannot be beaten –
ticking and tocking
the heartbeat of a house.
On TV The Repair Shop
at its allotted hour
restores treasured items
and the clock maker
is much in demand for –
mantel clocks with chiming mechanisms
corner the market for memories
of loved ones lost since childhood
when they made the soundtrack
of visits to grandparents
uncles and aunts.
Offices with Bauhaus severe wall clocks
Place them where drones can regulate their work
but if the heart isn’t in it
then they offer clock-watchers little solace
because a watched clock stretches time
with the incremental twitch of its hands
Once, clocks marked retirement
condemning the wearer
to pointless hours
with no consolation for being
wrapped in a gold case –
markers of growing up –
making the grade –
tokens of affection…
The utility of timepieces
nearly died with the ubiquity
of mobile phones with which
even children have
a constant time coach
an alarm clock, an egg timer
and a sports stopwatch
tickless and tockless in their pocket
time always on top –
at least they don’t show
the sands of time running out
though doubtless
there is an app for that.
There is now no excuse
not to know the time
broadcast by the network
linked to an atomic clock somewhere
but still a clock cannot control
the flexibility of time in mind
our stretching it out
in the instant of a crash
our inability to slow it
in the minutes before parting
the long minutes as medics
attempt resuscitation
before a doctor finally calls time.
Time is not always our friend
yet we carry a constant measure of it
in our pockets or strapped to our wrists
for fear of missing out…
© Andrew Wilson, 2024
Posted for dVerse Poets Pub Open Link Night where you can post one poem of your choice – Björn Rudberg (brudberg) is managing the pub for this after returning from his epic hike from the northernmost tip of Sweden to the end of the mountains in the south (1346 km in 53 days)!
This is another poem which is the fruit of my writing group where we were writing “in the shadow of” The Watch by Danusha Laméris
…
