Time

I saw this line "Is time the wheel that turns, or the track it leaves behind?" at the beginning of the first chapter to a novel I was reading (Fool's Errand by Robin Hobb) and thought it was an interesting philosophical question, I therefore decided to write a response to it in poetic form.

Time

"Is time the wheel that turns, or the track it leaves behind?"

Time is the controller of all things.
Time is the ageing of everything.
Time is the sags and wrinkles,
the length of life.
Time is the bane of mountains and the draught of rivers,
the destroyer and the maker.
Time is the never ending race to the present.

The wheel is never in the present.
It pushes its way through it and never looks back.
It does not stop to heed the wreckage it causes.
No 'time' for piteous mountains or rivers.
The wheel sees only what is before it,
and never behind.
It strives to reach the future.

The track is history.
It is the path of the past.
It is the hare and the tortoise,
the first place followed by the last.
It is that which has happened before the wheel.
That which never gets looked at.
For the wheel is the one that moves,
and never looks back.

So is time the wheel or the track?
There would be no track without the wheel,
and no wheel without the track.
No present without the past.
And no past without time moving the present along.
So the two must work in harmony with each other,
and time their master.


Though in modern times things are very different.
Now, 'time' is the Wheel.
The clock and watch with faces
that turn round and round,
and bare no wrinkles.
Turning forwards and round again.
But they leave no track.
For no one glances at the track anymore.
The track is quite irrelevent.
That is what has happened.
What has gone before.
Today 'time' is no longer past and present.
Time is it, and the wheel.
And for good, or ill, it is forever-

The future