Holding up a dusty collection of timepieces
sharp tools for marking minutes and hours
cutting the days and nights to ribbons
an antique clock
with its familiar cadence
that never fails to put me to sleep
and then somehow wakes me up
My grandfather’s watch still precise enough
to help me catch the train
or know when to take this medicine
an hourglass on the table with sand from the Costa Sur
a beach in Peru where time got stuck
a calendar’s pages turning
we’re all excited by what could come next
Time is seeping through all the rooms
then jumping up and down with glee
as it watches                 
every time the cuckoo bird comes out
ecstatic but
not letting me get very far away
clutching whatever he can hold on to
the tail of my coat                   my threadbare sleeve
in each other’s shadow wherever we go
Time gets a running start down the road
takes off
flies this way and that
always coming back with a pocket full of souvenirs
and reminders in red
And after being gone
and coming back
it’s like he never left
Time sitting there in the corner
with a mischievous expression           carving his name in the woodwork
Insistent on taking up space
somewhere between now and then
laughing hysterically at the movies or songs
and even poems
that try to do it justice
But fall flat on their face.

4.5.21 AUDIO READING OF POEM BY THE WRITER