Time Was . . .

Time Was . . .

The first thing I did 
was take down the clock 
running dutifully on its one cell 
of battery and move the hands 
forward, so the day could tick itself 
out correctly. And, as if no crime 
had been committed in the interim, 
no honest grocer shot, no house 
foreclosed, no mother locked frantic 
in the search for a missing child, 
time resumed its pure pace, 
chipping off the required squares 
of space as before—numbers 
straining toward twelve, one hand 
chasing the other under the shadow 
of the thin red whip driving the whole 
terrible mechanism. 
                             And suddenly, 
like an apparition called back 
from a great distance, there we were— 
the blue-white sea air, the first starts of stars, 
your watch ticking to itself on the dresser. 
And how we said we were beyond 
time, as if one could declare a truce 
with what's next. There shall be 
no what's next, we swore, only honey, 
and what's next falling into it slow and caught 
as in amber. How could I have imagined 
then, such silence. Such drowning.


Alice Friman