Some scientists say time is an illusion.
So how can I waste it?
But every passing moment feels like a mark against me, a failure to march resolutely toward accomplishing my goals,
however vaguely sketched in my head.
When I fail to spend my time well,
Guilt drains time into emptiness.
Time that doesn’t exist.
Oh why did I watch a game tonight?
Why did I spend time on meaningless play?
I could have read my book, or written a poem or called you.
Time is short at my age,
And time flies faster than truth can reveal.
Time that doesn’t exist anyway.
Why did I stay up so late doing nothing important?
Now tomorrow will get a late start,
And I will be behind my time again.
Even if time doesn’t exist,
I know soon I will be out of time;
And not half done with all I want to do,
And my time that doesn’t exist except in the mind’s eye, fleeting moments of narrative, unspoken history,
Will be lost to time that doesn’t exist.
So here I am
Sitting with a past,
half remembered and half imagined, looking to tomorrow,
as though it will always come,
Inventing next moves in time
that doesn’t exist.
Does anybody understand these seasons,
The perpetual cycle of sun and moon?
This well reasoned calendar,
dividing our days and years
as if we are going somewhere
in time that doesn’t exist?
THH
12/4/23
Thoughts Have Hands 