By Sam Barbee
I forgot to wear my watch–
today of all days–
the day I hoped to correct a few things,
to be enriched at the end of the rainbow,
figure out the levy of lost love.
When I glance at my tick-less wrist,
it extends, bare and tock-less with
a vacant glare, a pale swatch
where clarity should be strapped tight:
a must for triumph on any sunlit path.
With no personal chronology, I cannot
confirm the wall clocks, or hall clocks–
hearing their disputable chimes …
time to go, or come, eat, sleep,
a discordant future, each peal suspicious.
Hours eroding, confidence unwound,
I realize I have mismanaged my moments–
those milliseconds that equal verve
have been altered, disordered and
garbled to the point of bedlam.
Low on day-lit instants, I concede regimen
in these seconds for which I cannot account:
dusks’s toll that crowns confusion,
dark shepherd attending deceitful sheep,
idle pendulum that can never ring true.
Excellent.