Goodreads Authors/Readers discussion

Time


You could say time is nothing more
than just the constant circling of
hands on a clock,
a way for us to measure the day
as it dips in and out of light.

But it’s much more than that, isn’t it?
Its hold on our lives and thoughts
is as strong and relentless as the vacuum of gravity.
You need only to ask yourself how often
you’ve glanced at the hour today,

and whether that result made you anxious
about your late arrival,
or ecstatic about the flight
returning a friend from a distant place
remembered in months or years.

Its force stirs instant emotions,
transforming pictures into images of lost
love and youth,
and vacant houses
into symbols of yesterday’s lives and dreams.

It thrusts us into our world,
first aging the universe 13 billion years,
then ushers us out, bent and withered,
after barely eighty trips
around our own aged star.

And what precisely is our hold on it?
With our creams, our dyes, our surgeries,
our toys, our distractions?
Do we have a firm handle on time’s reins,
pulling it in with our meticulous measurements of the present,

counting the seconds and minutes with haughty confidence,
yet still feeling the reins slip away
as we remain in ignorance about its ancient beginning,
its unforeseeable future,
and our mysterious and brief place riding in its saddle.

By Vincent Lowry - October 18, 2012 - 1:07:21 PM

I love the entire poem, well done.

But this is a great line! ["is as strong and relentless as the vacuum of gravity.]

Valentinno
@poetvalentinno
A Romantic's Passion: The Tenth Muse

Nice... worthy of discussion in a literature class.

Thank you, Valentinno and Judy :)

It was a poem I had rolling around in my head for a while, and I finally decided to do something about it.

-Vincent