An Ode to Time

A few months ago, I first listened to the words “I love the passage of time.” I've heard them before, of course- they are from the Talking Heads song This Must Be the Place, and I basically grew up listening to Talking Heads. But I guess there's a difference between hearing something and actually listening, actually taking in the full impact of words at a time when you're ready to understand their impact. How scary is it to really love the passage of time. Time brings people into our life and takes them away, lets us grow close to others and pulls us apart.  Time crushes our hearts and opens up our eyes. Time is our mistress, make no mistake. The whole trick of life is learning how to love her, how to live within her and without her.  In honor of Time, I wrote the following ode:

1.        

Let’s stop and look at time, at how she moves.

She stomps. She scrapes, she grabs, pushes, runs off,

Stays far too long, then turns her back and scoffs.

Watch- her arms are wild, but her footwork smooth.

There is a pattern to this dance of time

She’ll sway, gyrate, undulate, oscillate

To a rhythm we can’t approximate

But if we cease to hesitate, we’ll find.

What we thought of as being stepped upon

Was not keeping with her response and call

Not playing our part, standing by the wall.

Her teasing then no strange phenomenon.

Time is what we build ourselves out of-

We’re conceived in the zeitgeist of her womb.

And our every thought borrowed from her tomb.

Without her, there can be no I, no love.

2.   

She has had other partners before us

This crone, this old and evil witch, Kali

This mother who birthed and will destroy me

She is so vast, and therein goes my trust.

She crushed my dreams, fears, and false perceptions

Danced atop my hopes and accomplishments

Underfoot my little embellishments

That I think of as me, those deceptions.

She kisses me (little thing I call my I)

But briefly and moves on (How can she? How?)

I was promised more (but just given now)

By falsehood (only guaranteed to die).

Some day she will step too harshly on me

I (little I!) will misstep, mistake, tire

She will dance atop me as I expire

I will be dispersed by her odissi.

3.        

Entropy seeps from her breasts like milk, sour;

To suckle at mother time brings collapse

But we can’t hide from her dance, can’t elapse

And her nectar is food we must devour.

For without her immunizing black pus

There is stagnation, no change; no sunset

Or the moon made arcane, complacent

With no bright future us nor joy of loss

Though no second returns, no light lingers

What she takes away circles back again

(love hope pain fear safety joy depression)

They spin, juggled in her wrinkling fingers

Every day she brings an apocalypse

A bit of the world ends forever

A sight that life had of itself severed

And each day new sights, new breaths in our lips.

4.        

We will never keep up, she will move on.

She switches up her tempo, but won’t rest

Every movement blending, blurring with the next

No matter how swiftly act our neurons.

Kali is not an enemy too hate

She chose to give us a bit of herself

To chew on, to experience ourselves

And all feasts have their expiration date

We have been promised but never insured

Another second from her, a next ride.

Like a wedding with a terminal bride

Savor every instant, nothing assured

She will have other lovers, has before

But is here for me now, makes love to me,

Evenings crystalized in eternity

She gives her presents and we ask for more.

 5.

In her eyes, there is no set divide

Between me as a child, adult, grave corpse

Each of my bodies from birth to death course

In one continuous fleshstream “I” slide.

Back to my father’s sperm, my mother’s cell

From Genghis and Jesus and Tut I come

My genes from corpses, from stars my carbon

And “me” preceded primordial gel.

She is greater than me, that tiny thought

But she sees me as all the universe

Shiva Nataraja, whose only curse

Is that he sees himself not as he ought

We are but the shred of a fingernail

Of the cosmos, continuing to grow,

That sees self as singular, as ego

Our present form just one step in this trail

6.

(And here’s a thing- what we perceive to be

Matter and anti-matter, positron/

Electron, could be one thing all along.

The same self, moved back and forth endlessly.

When these two particles collide, is it

Really collision, or just reversal?

Feyman says maybe gamma dispersal

Is from one thing changing, not two that hit.

That is to say that positrons are all

Electrons traveling the other way

In dimension four, tomorrow-today

And vice-versa, just one sole particle

And there could be just one of them, dancing

From the big bang to whatever comes next

All of space made by how it intersects

With itself, back and forwards, everlasting.)