Keeping Time - Jan 15 2024

 

Keeping Time

Jan 15 2024

I have trouble keeping time.

It's not the hands

turning circles within circles

or the flickering numbers in lights.

Just how it slips through my fingers.

Runs too fast to keep up.

Will not be owned, hoarded, squirrelled away,

and how investing it

nets no return.

So day after day

the sands run out.

I can tell it,

sometimes make it,

and even save time;

although in the end

it's never there

when you most want it back.

I try my best

to arrive on time,

work hard

to take time off;

am proud

to get it done in time,

but far too often

run out.

Today, I entered a dark tunnel

and lost track;

emerged

at the other end

not knowing when or where.

But it was delightful inside,

feeling as if

I had all the time in the world;

truly out of time

as if time had stopped.

In darkness,

but moving at the speed of light

and somehow all lit up.

The poem begins in a bit of mischievous word play.

But ends in an exploration of the “flow state”. Which is when I’m blissfully unaware of the passage of time; when there isn't any — in whatever sense of these words you mean — to keep, tell, or save.

At the speed of light, according to Einstein, all clocks stop. I will never go that fast. Impossible.

Nevertheless, I have the good fortune to get in the flow state most days — lit up by creativity and concentration — so for me, even without the impossible, time often stops just the same.