Soliloquy of the Clock Hand

Soliloquy of the Clock Hand

Fragment of steel, of light, of

       time—

straddled between

            worlds

they follow the power I wield

       paper-thin. 

Delicate as the deity who twirls me,

  feel my power in what 

    I cannot track.

March & I slay the days as if

            the calendar’s pages 

were the wrinkles  

growing on her 

  forehead. 

Make a click in time with 

with Grandfather’s old clock. 

The jagged minutes 

forming all the dodged bullets 

  leftover on the floor.

Hear, the living room reeks   

of old dreams & fossils. 

How sincere. 

In another entity, I imagine 

  the muscles must 

forge themselves

in a sheath of stars & teach me 

to fold paper airplanes. 

  

Feel the Milky Way’s

slow pulse & the embrace of comets 

coiling around me 

    like feathers. 

Could I rewind. Could 

I stop the ticking. Could I turn

off the watch. Then maybe this time 

I’ll see the lightning before

I hear the thunder. 

My job is to be a constant. 

Objective and cold.

 

So forgive me that instead I dream 

of childhood and immortality—

escalator into the sky. 

Either way, this house will 

overturn as the 

  Earth spirals

on its axis. The alarms 

    will fall & shatter

& I will be left gripping 

onto nothing but my torn

wrinkles in time. 

Here we are, 

the sky shivering— 

    new kindling, cinder painting 

  the grass. 

Watch: the sky’s

deluge. This mountain. 

Our hands—

everything shining 

brighter than it should be. 

 In the blur a needle flashes, falls—

in the unbreakable ring of time

a life listens,

calls. Branching of chronology &

 writing history. 

I offer but a clock as they work to your expiration

  I hold as much power as you have to grasp.

Carving the way to open the future. 

 

      envoy of power I fear not mine 

master of no harmony of my own design

          gatekeeper of time I cannot sway 

    feel my empty consolation as I age

 

        second—

               by— 

                second—