As I wrestle the real estate demons to the ground this past month, I am struck by how time has lost its mooring. Things happened before COVID, or during COVID, but, as yet, there is no after COVID. When I search my memory I find the COVID era slippery, fluid time, hard to pin down, unending.
Once upon a time, the calendar and the clock behaved. No longer, and not for some time. This thought occurred to me in 2020, when I no longer knew what would happen when. So I wrote this poem that Spring and I offer it this week in memory of all who fell ill, found themselves on respirators, or left us. May time slowly recover.
The hours on the clocks begin to melt and flow;
Seconds tick stealthily down the stairs;
Minutes pass by in disorderly numbers;
Hours slide off table-tops into shapeless puddles
Beneath our breakfastlunchsupper feet.
Seasons push back against the time judge;
June busts out before the end of April’s shower;
Crocuses wait, expecting a spring that stays at home;
White patches of snow huddle in dark corners;
No time to melt; there May be no flowers.
Years crowd together and watch helplessly,
Their numbers, unsnapped from the breastplate of timely order,
Jumble about, one digit here, another there;
Decades disappear; the century wonders if it has a future;
The young millennium weeps from the loss.
The calendar slips silently over the transom
And, last seen gathering its daily, weekly, and monthly children
By their empty unscheduled hands,
Scampers into the viral void,
Leaving only the present behind.
Suspension
Dead on. The melting clocks remind me of Salvador Dali. I finally succumbed to COVID, and lost 2 weeks or so without quite understanding where the days had gone.
Well done, Gordon.