Dust on the Clocks

There is dust on the clocks.
My great aunt’s wooden arch of a clock.
My grandparent’s green faux marble timepiece.
My parent’s odd angled English clock.

Each has a story.
Each has a long journey that brought them
ultimately here. Each keeps time
with uneven effectiveness. So different
you do not wind any of them,

not wanting the confusion of time,
different times and ticking. You keep them,
not to keep time, but to bring time together,
generations of the stuff, history and love
and people so dear that time loses its bind
on me, and them, bringing us together,
letting the dust gather on them, even
as they work their magic, bringing the dead back,
as it, somehow, they had never left.

About this poem

Nearly everything in my house reminds me of something or someone valuable and important. Including those three clocks in the picture.

I have often been told I do not have the same sense of time as most people. I think they are right.

From those things, this poem.

Tom