Time


I am Time,
I do not know
Where I’ve come from
Nor do I know whither I am going
I only know that I started in the past
And am going to the future
I can’t stop myself even
If poets mistakenly say I stand still sometimes
If I stand still, I’ll cause chaos
If I move back I’ll kill people
Or bring the dead back to life
And undo things both good and bad
My only option is to move forward
Like an arrow from a bow,
A bullet from a barrel or
Like the spoken word that 
Cannot be taken back.
People talk of Time travel
I grin and keep my peace
When I cannot travel back
How can they?

Advocateurs say I heal
Yes, I heal, but I also kill
As I pass, I transform infants into young
And young into old, and old into the dead
That’s the only way I know
The old must yield place to the new
That is the law of life
I have no memory of my own
Only people have a memory of me
People ask me what is my age
Physicists say I was born 14 billion years ago
Though I can't recall my birth
I am too old by earthly standards
But do I have a death? I do not know
If I’ve lived a long, long life
There must be something in me
That defies death
Because the universe is there I am there
If the universe ceases to exist, I will too
I have no purpose of my own
My purpose is linked to people’s purpose
In life;

You wonder where I live
I exist in your active mind
If you die, I exit
I have no use for the dead
The dead have no use of me
The living waste me like
Water running down the drain
I am an entity that defies
Definition
I am a concept imagined
By people who are industrious
The lazy and the procrastinators
Do not understand my value
I am different things
to different people
I am Time.

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