Tiny Funerals

Each second echoes through the room.
The slow swing of a pendulum.
The audible click of each wooden gear.

The history in this room is palpable,
a thing not of furniture and time,
but souls and errors long passed,

The clock is old, two hundred years and more,
Look inside and you can see the repairs,
generations of them, patches and plugs delicately balanced,

a strange determination to measure to measure
not past or future, but the moment before us,
each click of the clock a passing,

a tiny funeral
of what could have been,
and what might be yet.

About this poem

This is one of those poems that started to be about one thing, and changed its mind.

I am nearly two years into my second marriage. Coming to it late in life, it’s a miracle to me, and every moment matters in a way it did not when I was young. The rejoicing in that is beyond anything I could have imagined.

Tom