Concerto For Time Bandits

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Concerto For Time Bandits

“Old Time--his factory is a secret place, his work

is noiseless, & his hands are mute.”--Charles Dickens.

TIME: A non-spatial continuum in which events occur in

apparently irreversible succession from the past through

the present to the future.

The White Rabbit dashes about the Queen’s maze

                             staring at his large pocket watch:

                  I’m late, I’m late

                  for a very important date--

but like a gerbil spinning on his exercise wheel,

                             he went nowhere fast,           in a conflict

                             with inertia, caught forever

                             within the thorny parameters of the Now;

a prisoner,

a victim,                painfully aware that victory does not

                             always go to the swift--

just ask Tom Tortoise. 

Each of us squats comfortably

                              on our very own section of this planet,

                                                 trying valiantly to understand

                                                 hemispheres,

                                                 longitude,

                                                 latitude, & all those damned

Time Zones.          I reside in the Northwest, my wife is visiting

family in Texas, & as I write this she is two hours ahead of me,

                              while my oldest daughter in Maryland exists

three hours ahead--& so it goes traveling East  

                              ripping through zone after zone

traveling in an unbroken circle

                              until you bump into the butt of your own shadow,

arriving right back where you started; while some bush pilot

                              in Alaska struggles an hour behind me.

            When I traveled to Australia from California,

            dipping deep into the upside down reality of the Southern

            Hemisphere, speeding 8000 miles in 18 hours, I arrived

in Sydney the day before I left, & hey, when I returned, I arrived

            in LA 2 hours before I departed. 

Sometimes I find it to be fun to stop by a Clock Shop,
& stand in the actual moment

completely surrounded by thousands

of clicking, clanking, squeaking, whirring & twitching

springs & wheels housed in hundreds of time pieces--

                each a microcosm unto itself, a mechanical

miniature universe, inhabited by

                a vast population of dust mites, & while

our imagination has been focused so microscopically,

                 we take the opportunity to peer even further

                 within to a sub-atomic world

                 where a grain of sand

would appear to loom as large as Ayers Rock,

                 where Time stands still--

and that doesn’t even scratch the surface

                 of attempting to master or understand 

                            Time,

even while dropping into a whirlpool or worm hole,

                  folding back the edges of dimensional reality,

                  rocketing unimaginable distances

                                  while violating the laws of physics,

without even considering the metaphysical postulates

that beyond the Veil, Time does not,

                                           can not exist--

where Past, Present, & Future cohabit a linear continuum,

where

       the mysteries

                       of Life all

                                  become beautiful

                                                          pods of clarity.

So, what the hell time is it, you ask?

Well, you are standing in the pivotal center of it,

& it is later than you think,

& earlier than you would like it to be. 

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over on dVerse Poets Poetics

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