Showing my palm to the watchmaker’s tongue
He licks the time-line right down
The crease of my present senses and
The clock stops just there.
Now, I take or leave god
Depending on the weather
And, like most of us,
Consume astrology in small doses
To guess at twists of plot in life.
As for clocks, there’s no mystery,
They are purely functional:
We tell them what to mean.
Like nothing else, these sudden stillnesses of love
Make me wonder,
Not what spring keeps the galaxy spinning,
Rather, how
In my watchmaker’s hands time dies,
How my stupid body lives!
Stephen J. Williams 