The Death of Time

A clock on the mantle.
A pendulum swinging.
A quiet “tick. tock” fills the room
on quiet days.
On other days, busy as noise,
you barely hear it,
lost in a perfect kiss.

Still, it is there.
A creation of man to measure
what slips away,
tick by tock.

What would happen,
what would change
without measurement?
Would it matter as much?

I cannot say. I have never lived in a world
without measurement, but as I age,
I put aside more and more measurements,
And mostly, life is richer for it.

Time perhaps, to let the clock wind down,
and not rewind it. Let it be a decoration,
nothing more. A relic, like the past measurements,
of something what was, but is no longer
needed.

About this poem.

Ever kissed someone where time loses all meaning? What if all of life was like that? So the poem is about that. But also about how we measure others and are measured by. Poetry is never about one thing.

As I get older, the things we measure and judge by becomes less and less of my life. I think I like it that way.

The picture was taken at The Mount, Edith Wharton’s house in the Berkshires.

Tom