Here is one of my longer poems. I will mostly share haiku this month.
Watching the Clock
How many hours do we spend watching
the steel hands sweep the face of time?
Praying for them to speed up
then days later wishing they’d slow down.
At some point in time you realize:
Watching the clock makes time go slower.
So you try to stop counting the minutes.
Then you wonder, When did I get crows feet?
When did I start calling the kids
begging them to come over?
Wasn’t it just yesterday
that I was pushing them out the door to play?
When laying in a hospital bed
you would almost swear that the nurses
turn back the clock when you’re not looking.
And the sluggish pace of the hands
are more painful than the IV in your arm.
But if you’re enjoying an Italian dinner
the minutes fly by like wine from a tipped glass.
Sitting in a rocking chair with a baby,
who has been crying for hours,
makes the minutes creep.
You encourage the big hand to touch the 6
so that your husband will be home to help.
When friends are over for a bar-b-que
the hands laugh their way past time to go.
The clock is a bi-polar warden,
and we are at his mercy.