In her poetry collection, Traveling Light, Linda Pastan explores the ironies that assault us every day. We seek control of our world, experience, but time escapes even our understanding of its nature. Disease, disorders and defects we control by research into their origins, a cure only dollars away. Relationships we control by avoidance or setting severe boundaries. But time has a life of its own.
Clock by Linda Pastan
Sometimes it really upsets me—
the way the clock's hands keep moving,
even when I'm just sitting here
not doing anything at all,
not even thinking about anything
except, right now, about that clock
and how it can't keep its hands still.
Even in the dark I picture it, and all
its brother and sister clocks and watches,
even sundials, all those compulsive timepieces
whose only purpose seems to be
to hurry me out of this world.
the way the clock's hands keep moving,
even when I'm just sitting here
not doing anything at all,
not even thinking about anything
except, right now, about that clock
and how it can't keep its hands still.
Even in the dark I picture it, and all
its brother and sister clocks and watches,
even sundials, all those compulsive timepieces
whose only purpose seems to be
to hurry me out of this world.
"Clock" by Linda Pastan from Traveling Light.
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