The Net of Time
THE NET OF TIME
Time allows no second starts
No dress rehearsals or understudy parts
I cannot escape the net of time
Einstein found the net is curved - sublime;
But still a net.
Space travelers escape the world yet
Not time’s inexorable shape
Unlike a clock we have no mechanism for escape*
Even the miracle computer - Aladdin’s lamp polished
With genies’ voices and distance abolished -
I touch the key and travel the web:
Its floating silken mesh can rise or ebb.
When the day is young it seems an endless spacious net
But it crowds and tightens with the sunset.
In the hauling hands of the fisherman’s motion
I will be taken from this ocean
We can measure our pathetic short term and mark
Our scoresheet with crosses and ticks
But when the last tick sounds in the dark
And the ocean meets the Styx . . . . . .
We seek not to escape -
If we have learned to wear the cape
Of love, if we have no fear,
We can change the measure,
Listen through the lattice to a different hymn.
It’s not how long I could swim -
It’s how the other swimmers felt
When I with them dwelt.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Note
*Old fashioned mechanical clocks all had a ratchet used as an “escape
mechanism” which helped ensure regularity in ticking.
Copyright © Sidney Beck | Year Posted 2011
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