Monday 7 October 2013

The Clock

image by crilleb50




Day in day out, wherever I go,
I carry my clock with me.
Seconds, minutes, hours of my life,
it tells them all,
it beats and strikes and sometimes chimes.

Made to the highest specification,
by a Master Clockmaker,
it pleases me but seldom.
Today, the pace is wrong,
too fast, too slow.
Relentlessly, the clock ticks on.
its tempo never varies.

Today I plead with it to take its time,
to stay the hour of departure,
to keep my loved one by my side,
for happiness to last a minute longer.

When pain and sadness visit, it beats too slow for me.
I want the time to fly, the misery to end,
the hands to move around the face at twice the speed of light.

The clock was with me when my father died and
mother left her place beside the hearth.
Each step I took away from home into the world beyond,
was marked in stately progress by my clock.
When love was new, when marriage joined two hearts for life,
When children came and went,
when hair turned grey and backs grew bent,
when summer turned to autumn,
my clock was by my side.

Just now and then, it stutters, falters,
its rhythmic beat disturbed by unknown hands.
The Master Clockmaker probes its workings,
a little oil, a touch, a a tightening of the springs,
and off it goes, the mechanism wound once more.

One day my clock will stop,
and when it stops, it stops for good,
no power on this earth can make it beat again.
I know I’ve used it well and when I hand it back,
I’ll say,

‘Returned in gratitude;
I took great care of it,
but now it's time to rest the hands.
It wasn’t me who broke it.
The clock has stopped, all by itself.'




The Mag No. 189
Tess Kincaid’s Prompt for Sunday, Oct 6th, 2013
For many other treatments of the image click on the link.



35 comments:

  1. "One day my clock will stop,
    and when it stops, it stops for good,
    no power on this earth can make it beat again" - I LOVED this part.

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  2. So true, the words of this poem.

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  3. Love your poem, Friko. thank you for sharing it.

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  4. Hallo Friko,
    schönes Gedicht ... ich trage übrigens keine Armbanduhr, weil ich gerne zeitlos bin. Ich lebe gerne in den Augenblick hinein und genieße alles, ohne auf die Uhr zu schauen.

    Gruß Dieter

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  5. Beautifully written poem. Time is a friend; time is an enemy, and when used wisely, the moments will stay with us forever.

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  6. Oh time in thy flight. Make me a child again, just for tonight

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  7. That's the most important thing, isn't it? Ro know that you have used it well. Then you can have no regrets.

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  8. Wow. I really like the way you used this prompt. Thank you.

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  9. Hi there ... love the way you took the image and made it all your own!

    (I know you won't 'get' my USA baseball Magpie)

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  10. Nice words to accompany the photo, "when the clock stops" is worth pondering.

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  11. Oh, Friko, I know you've had some health problems recently, and I suspect you're talking about your heart.
    However, I hope I'm wrong.
    This is beautifully written.
    K

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  12. You have said all that may be said! And well too. Now I'll look away. . . .


    ALOHA from Honolulu
    Comfort Spiral
    =^..^= <3

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  13. Oh, Friko -- this is a fabulous poem. It has so many layers of complexity. It would be quite amazing without the prompt image, but with it, it is quite unbelievably perfect!

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  14. Clocks are not accurate. Time is relative. Pitch the clock.

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  15. time stops for no man
    until it does...and then may we be ready to let it slip
    from our fingers, or be placed in the hands
    of another.

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  16. And so it goes on, measuring the infinite moments of life ... beautiful poem and the rhythm is perfection!

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  17. Great words Friko. My watch has just 'died' and I'm finding out what life is like without it. Thought-provoking indeed, the subject of time.

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  18. geweldig mooi.

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  19. Measuring words with time - so very well said - this poem of yours - most powerful, moving through life til the end. I truly enjoyed your poem.

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  20. Oh wow this gorgeous, profound, and deeply moving

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  21. I had to read this a couple of times. While the first time I thought about you, the second time I thought about life in general and TGD in particular. It's all so true and inevitable and terribly beautiful to think about. Honestly, I can't think about it too much or put the thoughts into words as beautifully as you have. I liked this very much.

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  22. There is little I can add to all the well worded comments about your poem - it is built as intricately as the workings of a fine clock by knowing hands.

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  23. How profligate one can be with time when young !
    Who said that eventually it seems that breakfast comes round every 80 minutes ?

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  24. Lovely Friko. This poem made me realise that a timepiece is something that does indeed accompany us throughout our lives and sometimes we wish it to speed up, sometimes to slow it down but we are powerless, it 'rules' us.

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  25. Today was a day when my clock was at odds with my brain. I kept saying "Wait up! Wait for me!". But clocks wait for no one. Well said, Friko

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  26. The clock stops by itself for all of us, till then we must live life to fullest!
    Beautiful lines and flow of words. :)

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  27. Frico, at first I thought this poem is cruel, then I thought it was a bit sad, and at final I liked the words: '‘Returned in gratitude; I took great care of it' I think not many people could say that they took care of their time of during life.

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  28. Thoughtful, beautiful and terrible.

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  29. Just to clarify - terrible in the sense of terror the thoughts can evoke, not referring to the formation of your poem

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  30. Oh, I really like this one...especially the idea that sometimes we want to speed it up or slow it down.

    =)

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  31. Beautiful! No matter how much time I spend on it, I know I'll never be able to write poetry as well as you!

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  32. Beautiful, and also sad. I love this, Friko (and I hope all is well with you). Thank you.

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  33. Nicely done! I adore the ticking off of all that matters, the milestones of time.

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