Reflections By The Bay

Sunday, September 7, 2014

TICK TOCK, TICK TOCK

Poem for Today - Sunday September 7, 2014

TIME PASSES

Once I was a boy and I sat in a meadow with flowers in it;

I sat for hours in it,

Enjoying the sun and the brave birds in the heaven,

When I was approximately seven.

Later I was a long and learned stripling,

Reading Kipling,

And nothing I heard but the factory hooters blowing,

While time was remorselessly flowing.

The hours they fly me by with astonishing celerity;

I have not the temerity

To remember the hours that have gone by, unnumbered,

While often I slumbered.

I have sat in the pubs and seen the rings of froth on the glasses,

And thought to myself, Time passes.

They brought me a pint of mild, but I asked for bitter,

Thinking it fitter.

For life, as it lumbers by, unwieldily hastening,

Is a matter most chastening;

Too seldom have we laughed in the morning with the larks on the mountain,

Or leaned on the fountain

Watching the waves and the neat-clad ducks in a huddle,

Or, kneeling beside a puddle,

Beheld the leather-legged insects jumping in jubilation

Or pausing in sudden indignation;

It is a strange error that keeps us such things ignoring,

In studies insensately snoring,

While the hands of the rude, insatiate clock

Go tick, tock, tick, tock.