A Clean White Clock

Time moves on, yet stays in place.
It doesn’t change and we don’t change it,
so we must move through it?
Is it like water,
we like submarines
churning every which way
at the speed that it permits?
Is it progress, or just a state?

Do we fit in it tight as fingers
or does it fit around us, gloves?
Does one size fit all?
Something like an egg.
is time our nest,
our mother hen incubating us
toward peeping out, then hatching
into a clean white clock,
ticking toward a deadline
which rings a bell
to wake us up and turn us out.
When our time has come
do we die out of it,
or does some of us stay in?

I’ve been here before,
many times I think.
When there are ends there’re origins.
Few travel toward them, fewer yet arrive
where whence they came.

I strike this match to light my candle
if time’s wind will let me.
I don’t know where that wind began
and can’t know where it goes.