TIME
Time is toneless temporary thing
Yet to its gauge we raise note and sing.
Time has no odor, and has no taste
Yet contours life, post haste.
Time has never yet been fully seen
We know not if its fat or lean
We assume its half-way clean
Yet yield ourselves to its touring stream
Time has no bulk, has no weight
Yet is in charge of “go” and “wait”
It has no muscle of its own
Yet still decides when seed is sown
When timothy and clover are mown
When wheat’s heads bend down with a groan
Time ages all youth, ages all sages
Time yellows the book’s first and last pages
Time controls the curtain on all stages.
If you were to meet the “Mr. Time“
You’d find him gentle, a bit sublime
More given to prose than to rhyme
Time has no face yet marks all faces
It speeds through youth with its paces
Flows through middle life’s laces
And ends all old-age races.
Time has a name, as a demeanor
Makes many things thicker, thinner
Decides the losers, crowns the winner
Runs the “show” but never shows its smile
Starts and ends every motoring mile
Decides fall’s fashion or “out of style”
Defies definition in diction books
Is impartial to the honest or to crooks.
Time is the control we’ll someday lose
Whether upward or downward way we choose
Treat time with solemn respect
Do not its lesson once neglect
Heed time’s ceaseless call and beck
Time, so powerful on this earth
Timing, so important in joke and mirth
Time, nice to all, regardless of birth
Will someday find its run its course.
Be as out-of-date as buggy and horse
It’s on a collision course with another force.
An angel will, with foot on sea, on land
Bring time (as we know it) under a band
It will have its “Custer’s last stand.”
Time, so impersonal, so “just”
Alike to crushed, and to “upper crust”
Prodding pioneers (“California or bust”)
Will have its final flight and fling
Will lay on its side, a warn out thing
Eternity has a totally different “ring.”
These lines fail to describe
The millions of every un-lost tribe
Who’ve suffered time’s relentless bribe.
No king has ever had the power
To buy at death, an additional hour
Be life’s closing sweet or be it sour.
All princes have obeyed time’s rule
As have their court’s odd-dressed fool.
Time wears out the best tool man makes
Time exposes all hypocrites and fakes
You cannot both eat and have your cakes
Yet soon (a time-relevant word)
Time’s closing, dying cry will be heard
And time as seen and felt by all
Will receive its last, its ending call
At last its perpetual motion will stall.
Friend, love now the King of kings on high
‘Cause when time ends – endlessness draws nigh
You can greet it without a sigh.
– eab, 8/27/11
Separate-Holy 