My grandfather’s clocks
My grandfather’s clocks are the pulse of his house
Originally published on Instagram September 16, 2023.
My grandfather’s clocks
are the pulse of his house
Whenever I walked inside his home
I heard them speaking
Truly they talk
A syncopated tap dance
Punctuated by bursts of song
And when the gong would sound
I always wondered how he could sleep through that racket
But every day he wound them, tended to their time keeping, a gardener
Roses in spring, summer
Snow
Deer
Always deer
Always time
I assumed
Time for another song, perhaps
Or a story
But
His watch ticks inside a box beneath the ground now and
my grandfather’s clocks
Are quiet
No one to wind them
No waking for another day or
Another rose
A pair of pruning shears left on a table
for a next time that is now not.
I wonder what they would say, the silent clocks and so I ask them —
“How do you feel?”
And so I ask myself —
What would you do
if do-overs were more than a dream that you dared to dream?
In stillness, the clocks whisper my heart’s lament.
More time.
We thought we might have more time.
