Windups Poems | Examples

Time Warp

. for public domain

When I was much younger, I'd cross the street,
in little brown trousers, with shod little feet,
to pick up letters in the mailman box,
and set them between grandmother's old clocks.

"It's best to have two windups, you know
in case one is fast and the other, slow."
So each day she would find the mail arrive
'round half past seven or quarter to five.

To my advantage, I reset the dials
to suit my own bedtime with devious smiles,
and when my grandmother set off to bed,
I set the clocks right for the next day ahead.

Now that I'm nearing my grandmother's age,
sometimes I linger on one special page,
I read this one note with eyes full of tears.
"I know what you did with the clocks all those years."