I look through the crystal face,
watch the hands circle
around, hands turning,
not creating time but only
simulating the irreversible movement
of past into future, quickly
past the present. I can, surely, grip
the stem between finger and thumb
and turn the ticking sticks
backward, 5-4-3-2-1, but nothing
in the past is ever recreated, nothing
damaged ever fixed, not entirely,
like the eroding beach beneath
my feet—no Golden Age to
return, no, never, no future bliss
of Kingdom Come, only this present
moment. And I don’t know what
to make of it, this experiment
of the now that resists observation
or interpretation, and is unmerciful
to any miscalculation.
it would be interesting if all it took to move forward or backwards in time was the movement of the clocks hands by thumb and finger…but we spend so much time already living in the past and the future…maybe it would be the only way to truly appreciate the present. hmm…
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If we really could manipulate time like that, I think we’d only screw things up even more than we ordinarily do. I mean, just our fake manipulation of Daylight Savings Time messes me up for weeks!
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