It’s gone thirty years since this light steel disc
warmed to his skin,
sixty and more since I laid my child’s ear
closer to hear
what I could not read (for who goes there?
to Babylon, hourly):
my play-time shortened by the whisper of a tick,
its sprung mechanism,
light-tongued creature, touch-ing, touch-ing
(so whose time is it?)
his wrist’s pale skin, my wondering ear,
and I praying
for more time to play, as the calculating thing
dialed the sunshine’s
livelong light and stole my day
with three thin hands—
nothing like hands, but insect feelers
that rounded up
my first garden’s early dream-time,
snaffled away.

Then, it was only play-time I’d save
from the scuff of its count,
its too smooth run of minutes, hours,
its winning way;
now, finding it silent in a drawer,
I bend my ear
and wind the tiny tractor wheel
to hear it still
touch-ing, touch-ing, after thirty years,
his wasted wrist
raced to its ending, and the child’s child-wish,
long vanished, dismissed,
to stay in a garden as light diminished.
I strap its cold
close on my wrist-bone, the leather-worn eyelets
stretched (almost torn)
to the buckle-tongue, till the fit’s my own,
my anyone’s timing,
and listen—to the doomsday drummer in it—
just for a tick.

poetry-magazineLivelong Day

Livelong Day