Timing is Everything

I was never there, the day everything changed.
When was that? When World War II ended?
When Einstein discovered relativity?
When nine-eleven crashed into infamy?

Or when Harry really met Sally?
Or when you simply ate a peach that summer day,
juice deliciously dripping down your tanned wrist
and somewhere I suppose, a child was born.

Truth is, everything changes
with every breath we take.
Every pivot, every spin, every loping run,
something new becomes.

Nothing stands still. Except perhaps
sentinel mountains in the Norwegian fjords.
Yet even they are marred by subtle granular shifts
as we gaze up at their rugged rockface surface.

Like when we turned around
and our children were adults.
We noticed when their braces came off that summer,
but we didn’t register the daily momentum.

Hell, we just celebrated a New Year
and it’s already old. Even this moment.
It’s now the moment that just was.
Did you blink? Did you notice it pass by?

Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today Merril gives us a list of podcast titles and asks us to write a poem including two of the titles: I’ve chosen “I Was Never There” and “Pivot”. Image from Pixabay.com

The Mysteries of Time

Time slips away, disappears.
Those years of youth,
ours and theirs.

I had a firm grasp on reality.
Even so, the mundane simmered,
repetition melded, numbed time.

Infinitesimal changes crept in,
unnoticed until too late.
What was, was gone.

Those everyday moments . . .
in hindsight I know
were anything but mundane.

Sweet viscous memories
fragments, rarely continuous,
slip and slide in my mind.

I sit, smiling gently,
my head in the past
then force myself into the now.

Pen in hand,
I write as time moves on
faster than my script.

My gait slower, skin thinner
eye sight cloudier,
but joy nurtures me.

Each day is still a gift
for one constant reason.
You are still beside me.

Time

Time is a glutton,
no pause in its diet.

Time is invisible,
except in heights marked
on a kitchen door,
candles on a cake,
tombstones in cemetery plots.

Time can not spin backwards.
Its lust for more seconds,
more days, more weeks,
more years, more decades,
insatiable.

Time eats each word I write.
Time, the ravenous glutton.

Image from Pixabay.com

she waits . . .

elusive time
slips through fingers
like threads of gossamer silk

elusive time
disappears like dew drops
as sun steeps blades of grass

elusive
as sheaves of journal pages
covered in faded ink,
tear drop stains
softened by the years

journal pages
fingered tentatively
as she sits, mind wandering,
wizened body ensconced
in pale grey prayer shawl

still-life-940113_1920

I’m hosting the bar at dVerse today, a virtual pub for poets, and asking folks to write a poem with the word “time” in it; or a poem about a particular time etched in their memory. Bar opens at 3 PM Boston time. Stop by and imbibe some poetic words or take up the prompt yourself. We’d love to have you! Photo credit: Kristen Hultzapple.