In the Kerfuffle of Shuffling Time

We shuffle the days
like cards across the table,
hoping to draw Spring.
But the deck grows ever thinner
with every hand we choose to play.

Entropy walks on,
spilling sugar, cooling tea,
loosening tight knots.
dealing cards from beneath the pack
while Time pretends not to notice.

There's much kerfuffle
when stars bend the road between
one heartbeat and the next.
Cards arrive out of sequence
Distance becomes duration
Time is stretched and distended,
paths are bent and distorted
and you arrive before you left.

Memory itself reshuffles
dealing tomorrow before yesterday.
A mother's laugh, a child's distressed cry—
both hiding in the same hand
waiting for the shuffle
to reveal a trump card between them.
We trace every moment
on clock faces and calendars,
yet we cannot tell
which breath came first
or which came last.

The instant we watch too closely,
the dealer stops dealing,
skips a card,
moves on—

then quietly slips
an extra card into our pile
while we're looking 
the other way.

For, the kerfuffle of entropy's shuffling
keeps ruffling the deck 
we mistake for 
of our Time.

timelyric

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