time

Day 12 ~ I didn’t use a prompt today

/ A. Gouedard / Leave a comment

Considering Time

Where will we ever find time?

The answer to that
depends on the date of your death.
Consider it might be tomorrow
and make up your mind to live.

But, you’ve misunderstood my question.
I will rephrase it. Listen.
Where will we find time?

Let’s look in the hedgerows first
to see which plant are budding,
are they limp or dry?
Have all their leaves been lost?
Has a bird built a nest or are all the fledglings fledged?
Did they all fly away to the south?

A year is the same as a decade
or a summer can last a year
but only when you’re a child.
Time is a relative concept
linked to innocence.
It moves faster as you age.
To witness time watch an apple
moving from ripe to rot.

I don’t own a clock.
I don’t expect precision.
If you want to arrange a meeting,
I’ll meet you when the sun dips down
behind the ridge of your roof,
or later if you like
when Mercury hangs above us
a step to the west of Jupiter,
almost parallel to the the moon
(that is to say, on April the 12th at roughly half past nine).
I will wait for you there but if that’s too soon,
any chance meeting is fine.
These moments hang
on the infinite line of time.

Do you think it ‘s all on a line?
I don’t.
Everything turns around and everything’s relative.

The rotation of the stars at night
is faster than we perceive.
I’ve seen them move, from dusk to dawn,
by sitting as still as a rock.

© A.Chakir 2023

day 3 – My Tomorrows

/ A. Gouedard / 1 Comment

There is a hollow truth

at the heart of all youth,

It fades slowly away.

I don’t often yearn

for the glow of those years.

The mornings were yellow

But the sunset is gold.

I feel no burdening sorrow.

There’s advantage to being old;

I will always value tomorrow.

Tick Tock

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tick tock
tickety tock
clocks and tickets
tickets and clocks
connections and blocks
blocks to connection
contact is lost
but as the hands turn
time unwinds clocks
the coils spring back
solid as rock
the connection remains
dreams hang in mid-air
suspended in time
suspended, but there
in a place with no tickets
a place with no clocks

Butterflies Wings (Afternoon with Macbeth)

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Time passes,
time drags,
time repeats,
time snags,

Time ticks by.
There he lays.
The room is dark.
The room is cold.
Childrens’ voices pierce the veil.
Here is the killing of a King.
Lady Macbeth reaches out.
No-one grasps her bloodied hand.

Time rolls round
and time rolls round.
The end is set
by moments marked on a digital clock.
Death marks the walls with fast drawn chalk.
This is the circle ambition brings.
Generations repeat the sin.

In the street outside,
with early signs of April rain,
the swan bends down and folds its wings.

In the cafe down the road,
by the window where light falls
on polished wood, the books are glued,
their pages shut, their words unknown.
An old man shuffles by alone.

On every table in the room,
the yellow rose is in full bloom.
Shakespeare’s lips are butterflies wings.
Four friends meet and seal a bond.
They all know the plays the thing.

Levitate

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As the evening sun goes down
wild geese fly above the town,
a circling pattern in grey skies
with creaking wings and hooping cries.
As the darkening hour grows late
I feel that I could levitate

”Be careful there.
Don’t challenge fate.
Icarus made that dread mistake.
Hubris led him to a fall
and you may never rise at all.
Optimism is a clown ~
you may circle round the town
but then it all comes crashing down”

You are wrong.
As the evening hour grows late
I will rise, against my fate.
I hear a deep internal song.
The sun goes down, my spirits rise.
The sky is where I most belong

Empty

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empty is a hollow word
that hits the stomachs pit
a fathom deep, no echo,
a void no thought can fill

to climb from it,
an act of stubborn will,
a fight, a war on loneliness,
a war on time
that moves without resolve
through every slow-stepped hour

and after this,
a blighted bud without a flower

Or, horses

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The days go round and round,
One dragged hour at a time,
In minute variations of the same,
With no specific aim or destination
And no aid to emptiness in passing.
The gradual fading grey of shallow light
Towards a long and lonely night
May lead to near-forgotten dawns
Of frosted daisies growing in damp grass,
Where the hawk cries out in grief above the meadow
And life is full of streams and running horses.
What a sight!
What delight!
How willingly I’d follow.
Damn the clocks.
Damn the wishing.
Damn the dark tomorrow.
Damn the hollow call that draws the heart to sorrow.

Sweet Avon

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Under green summer willows my family walked,

Avoiding the shadows of serious talk.

As a child, without care, I ran on ahead,

Chasing the sunlight, alarming the swans,

Watching the ripples that spread from the banks,

I took all for granted, when time was my friend.

Now, by the Avon, I wander alone.

Clear in the knowledge that everything ends.

Now I find comfort in rivers and ghosts.

Lost Watch

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I lost my father’s watch in the sea
When I wandered about on a beach.
It’s well that it rests there,
He wanted an ocean burial,
But the sea was too far out of reach.
We didn’t have time for arrangements,
Time flew by too fast,
but now he is rested at last.
My family heirloom lies on a sea bed of shells,
Corroded by rust,
Informing the fish of the turning of tides
As it drifts back and forth in the currents
Showing it silvered face
round as the full moon, in it’s season.
I lost my father’s watch in the sea.
He would be happy,
But time seems to have stopped for me.
Like a screen on TV,
Gone blank.

The Rocking Stone

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On Cadair Idris, close by to the bottomless lake of Llyn Cau, I spent the night on a Rocking Stone, with a youthful desire in my heart, to be a Poet Bard. Legend has it that a night on Cadair’s cold flank gives the curse of madness, or the blessings of Seer or Bard. I knew the risk to my mind and the risks of the rocking stone, the balancing of the stone, a balance to be held on a dark night, high up and all alone. I sat and prayed in silence to the moon and stars above, looking up with eyes wide open, alert to the mountain, the rock and the wind that blew in that desolate spot.

The night was long. I came down with the dawn as nothing; an empty vessel waiting to be filled. No-one, nothing at all. Aware that I was very small.

Ten years later, or was it five, and does it matter how old I was, I spent the night on a rock atop a Tor, looking out across a wide open remote moor. I saw the creatures of the night as they scurried about and eyes shining and blinking in the dark. I heard the song of the wind through the rocks. Nothing more. It was enough.

The night was long. I came down feeling I belonged to something though I knew not what. I became a journey begun.

The night I spent on the cliff edge where the wind sings in the grass above granite rock, the waves beat on the rocks below and seven hours became one. Time slowed, or the stars and the moon sped by, who can tell which, the night I sat high on the cliff edge, the moon path spread across the sea, glimmering on water, reaching out to the a far horizon.

The stars, with the moon at the centre of all, moved in a slow ballet of curved motion across the sky, the constellations shone out from the web of night, a rotation eternal, a moving wheel. Beneath me the tide rolled in an out, fast. Time did not stop, it slowed or the world sped up while beauty shone out high above.

Seven hours became one.

If I can, by a shift of my mind, alter seven hours to one could I change one hour to seven and make life longer or can I pull seven hours into one? What is time but illusion? The days of a child are long, a summer an eternity. Seven hours could easily be as seven decades to a shorter lived creature than me. Does a butterfly live six score years and ten in so short a span as a day.

The earth is a rocking stone held in place by the moon while the sun brings it life. Time does not exist. Life and death is all we have and are but we are not bound in time.

We are all finely balanced on the stone. We either fall off or we balance.

This is all I have learned on the Rocking Stone. This is not the end of my journey, a journey I make alone.