Friday, May 25, 2018

Time comes quantized . . .

     Earlier this month, I saw a poem ("Time/text") by wonderful Canadian poet and friend Alice Major on Facebook and she has given me permission to offer it here.  It is from her first book of poetry, Time Travels Light, (Rowan Books, 1992).

Time/text     by Alice Major

Time comes quantized
in little books     pocked
with fifteen-minute intervals
that mark my progress
through the day —

          Niggling book of kells
      spelling out the duties
  and services
         peculiar to each hour.    

They stack up in my desk drawer
beside month-end reports —
proof that I existed in July
of 1990, attended meetings,
ate lunch, wrote a letter.  I reorder
from companies called
  Daytimer
  Time Text

Until I turn a page and find it
  blank
seamless, unrecorded —
a day that has slipped away whole
and entire. For all I know, it was a day
I met with the universe,
illuminated a manuscript
with a single symbol —
          Ω Omega, or
   ∞ Eternity

 Where does time go?   Thanks, Alice, for your poem.

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