Time Is Magic

Time

You talk of time
as if it were a line
a thick bamboo stick
that we dodge
in a slatted dance of tribal seconds.

What about the scars
that we have brought into this life from the last?
On our bodies and psyches...
That, is time not dodged.

Time is not a line –
remember the crater that darkened life
when my sister lost her son?
A well of agony was suddenly drilled
on plain pastoral lands,
as if pain was set in stone.

Time is a set back;
the diabetic gene is also time
an unpleasant parcel reluctantly passed on.

From full to crescent,
the sojourn of the moon is time
that it sometimes slips into the hearts of lovers
is time standing still.

Time is the warp of waiting
that dries up the fluid from knees
and hope from the heart.
Souls depart but the waiting stays
like ivy on the steps of ancient temples.

Time at its worst
is the empty room and doorway of a house
in which an old man lives silently
waiting only for death.
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