Kit Kelen - #394 - do you remember

394

do you remember

the moment when time was discovered?

it sounds like Julius Sumner Miller

but it's long before that

no school ever taught us to breathe with the clock

or know that the heart hammers under

do you remember hearing it first?

Christmas wouldn't come

though you couldn't have put it this way

at that point

you're sure that you'll live forever

and then we come to say the hours

colours, seasons, inland rivers

it's all forever named

the world's as flat and still as looking

then someone says it's round

you never need to mention language

it's a word for each thing at a time

three is yellow

four is green

and five of course is blue

no one's mentioned mystery

but it's up to you

existence is an opening

the whole world's onto then

so I suppose the soul's considered

it's plasticine and Perkin's paste

the dinosaurs dance

see the skeletons under

later there's the Mercurochrome moment

bit of bark off, knees are skinned

see then that healing's a kind of forever

pick at it, pick at it, slap

tie your own laces

the Mőbius instance

once known – forever done

and so one recognises that for our purposes

time has neither beginning nor end

but we come along

slipped somehow into the running stream

and that's life... it goes on

and it runs on

into the afternoon so

odd moments out of need and want

as suited to reflection

let's say a certain sunbeam

with dustmotes

or you know that everything is atoms

then you take that not for seeing

but for symptom of the truth

dreams bubble up

and you must guess

that they were always dreamt

so play with yourself as much as allowed

we come to the Periodic Table

ogle after

or you're sought

take turns

you learn to tie

you pick out a first dress

and now there's Keats and Mozart, Rembrandt

Rachmaninoff not yet

the names fall on us like confetti

there was a time you could shrug them off

but the radio insisted

there's a moment – and a good long while

you know you're loved and needed somewhere

just for a self you are

and sometime then some others die

who were that way with you

a funeral first!

you the see the stream can run to dust

in a certain summer

that sun's a bastard then

still the rains return

for we who remain

who are here to run with time

we're grateful for a roof

and solemn

we have a Bible of words for it

time's stuck fast in them

and guess at the rust we might outlast

guess which tin lengths see us out

or should

on the wall we stare it down

some cynicism kills the time

watch how top of the clock it comes still

train still maybe a minute away

but then you notice the acceleration

the hundred pockets of the day

bulge with all to do

the year of resolution flounders

then years, then resolution too

it's like the map's rolled up behind us

how did we get to here?

you could curse your choice of century

long as a wingbeat

tombed with time

how we have wished

and wishes won

this is the prison

we build from inside

all at it headlong

grey rides back like a moon-tugged tide

then in the mirror you'll observe

that we're the wrinkled sea

there's a moment you look forward to

when you know the end's not far

and wonder how your world adds up

and how you've added

how it will be when you're not

there's a moment you know

you'll never know

and so that's it for certainty

then time lies curled around us

for a question

we're naked in

right now