The Clock

THE CLOCK In the shadows of deepening twilight remote in a familiar world; each moment the tick of a clock, each one added to all that have gone before, each, one less the total. How many days have I or should my time be set in breaths. What if I breath faster, will slow breath slow time, but no answer from the night. The wind wafts in and out through the open window stirring the shadows; each gust like the breath of some dim giant, his pulse the flow of time. Time, ever moving, unyielding to any hope or thought; time’s path to infinity shielded from the present as though by an invisible wall, holding back hope and thought. Along this pathway from the past there lays scattered, time worn debris; all the dreams once cherished, now no more than faded pictures; names and faces lost to memory, the significant now insignificant. At one time I thought or did think I could stop universal madness with a scream, but I couldn’t scream and expose myself; time raged in open warfare, unmolested in its bludgeoning way. Yet unchecked life flows in rapid acceleration further from the beginning ever closer to the end, each moment the tick of a clock without sound yet still heard. Immortal I the soul ponders of universal wonders, while mortal I lay quietly in the depth of shadows; each tick, one added to all, each, one less the total.