Chasing Time

Chasing Time

Time is not static
even though
atomic clocks say elsewise--
and they tock and tick
each moment
as a second-hand inexorably
progresses forward.
And, indeed, the world
marches to the beat of those
innumerable second hands
sweeping ever forward;
controlling our days, our times to work
or sleep or eat.

And yet, I insist that time
is fluid. As in the fluid flooding
along dry riverbeds or cascading
down a monumental cliff
after weeks of monsoon rain
or a tsunami rushing miles inland.
Because as time (hah!) eushes
onward, onward into the breach--
the days and weeks fly by
in mere seconds.

I remember summers stretching out forever
or weeks seemingly endless preparing
for a child. I remember
endless nghts of loving
or walking the floors
holding a screaming child. Time
took its infinite time
to creep by. Now it is April
and I'd swear Christmas was last week.
Seasons come and go so quickly
that I wonder why I take down the tree at all.
We fuss over the yard and gardens
and in the time a bloom blossoms,
this time, again, for cold and snow.

Once there were weeks of greening times
when the fist green tinge strengthened into the lush,
when long nights shortened into days when
bedtime was in the wee hours predawn.
Now bedtime is caught. Is 8 o'clock too early
when he's nodding off at the computer?
Three years ago is both forever
and yesterday. A 'long, long time ago'
no longer means a hundred years but ten or fifteen.

Time surges and we scurry to keep up.
hubby still talks of high school days and adventures
as if they just happened rather than
fifty years ago and a reunion looms.
How can we possibly
have four great-grandchildren?
I'm not old enough
to have four great-grandchildren!
Or have important, life-changing events
be decades ago.

I refuse to accept that we might
have but ten or twelve years left,
that the vast majority of our lifetime
is in our shadow, that we aren't getting
any younger in this onslaught of time.
The mirror and my mind disagree.
The Peter Pan in me refuses.

A granddaughter says she can't wait
until she 'grows up.' Until she's old enough
to be and do all that she is nowhere near
ready to do. Take your time, we tell her.
You have all the time in the world.
Don't rush it. Sooner, or later,
you'll wish you could stop it
in its tracks and just
lollygaggle or a bit. Float in limbo
and just be. All to soon
the kids are grown and the joints
creak louder than the music when we dance.

And yet. We dance. We go to bed
before the sun sets. We catch the worms--
the wondrous moments, those sunrises,
the us times as we do all we can
to slow the flow
of that sand falling
in the hourglass of life.
We smile and flip the glass over
again as we have made a habit of missing
the last few grains of sand
cascading downwards.

Perhaps it is that
we appreciate time more now
than we did in our youth
when we were immortal
and knew we'd live forever.