TIME IS LIKE A COSMIC RIVER

TIME IS LIKE A COSMIC RIVER Time is like a cosmic river running to a somewhere sea, As wide as all existence, long as eternity. Time to be or not to be, time either foe or friend. Always in the background, always ready to transcend. Time has no dimension, it is something we can’t see. We cannot feel it, taste it, hear it, but we know that it must be. Invisible yet constant, being both the now and then, Just by looking in a mirror, we can see that it amends. We know time goes not backward, can’t return to change things done. Can’t change defeats to vict’ries, change battles lost to won. Hours, minutes, seconds, the sum of all things done, Each needing a decision, including taking none. Each old and yellowed photograph in album or display, Marks one moment back in time, asked to stop and stay. Told to be still and not to smile, complied then walked away, Not realizing that moment would be history today. Time is wealth that’s given, to everyone the same, Coal miner in the underground, tycoon in his plane. Each day a new beginning, hours always twenty-four. We can waste them or embrace them but we cannot ask for more. We cherish certain places, go back many years along, To find that all those places are either changed or gone. Hour after hour, day by each succeeding day, All the places that we knew changed silently away. We can’t borrow from tomorrow, cannot undo yesterday. We can only live each second as time strips them all away. Each tiny intersection to keep on or change direction, Alterations by an actor in a universal play. We measure time in hours, days and months and years. Centuries, millennia, the distance between spheres. A hundred thousand light years just to cross our Milky Way, A dot within the universe, time and distance in our way. On Earth time keeps its order, moving neither fast nor slow, To keep us all from chaos, when to stop and when to go. When to sow and when to reap, to sleep and when to rise, A time to stand upon one’s ground, a time to compromise. Time is like a cosmic river running to a somewhere sea, As wide as all existence, long as eternity. And in those final moments when eternity arrives, The sum of our decisions, the stories of our lives. Ellis Craig, 2024.