Once Upon A Time

Time

Neither swift nor slow, good nor bad, time passes. . .
It is, was and always will be. . . time.
No matter the qualities attributed to it,
time is neither friend nor foe, helpful nor hindering
And as it passes over, under, around and through us;
unseeing and unseen.

Time’s goal is to pass... and it does,
regardless of any and all efforts
to clock it, worship it, suppress it, ignore it, use it or abuse it.
Oh but how we try to analyze time,
encompass it, relegate it, consume it.
Yet, for all our efforts, time ignores our neurotic cravings
to control it, manage it, equate it, subjugate it.

Though we try to buy time, rent it, sell it,
stop it, watch it, conserve it... all is for nought.
Though we take “time off” or believe we “make time”
or think we make "good use of time" . . .
All is irrelevant. All is in vain,
for time ignores the existence of all things, all plans, all beings.

Time does not tell. It never has and never will.
Time is amoral. It communicates with no one and,
even as we speak of it, time shamelessly ignores us.
Neither acknowledging our quaking demise
or giving value to life’s quivering breaths.

The “times” we hold dear pass unsympathetically,
unceremoniously, unemotionally,
even as our fantasies concoct warm memories of their passing. . .
We do not, in the end, “have” time. It is not ours to hold.

To live is to pass through it as it passes through us. . .
And to exist at all is to worry over it.
But time. . . cares not whether we do or not; are or are not.

Time is its own void, its own universe, its own reason for being,
the creator of its own potential, denial or disappearance,
the master of its own eventual recreation. . . or not.

And as it is what it is, time will always be that most famous of accused;
blamed as the source of our ineptitude, our fears of solitude,
our griefs and angst and paranoias.
Yet, how can we put down time when we fail to see it
for what it has always been and forever will be...
timeless?

(late 60s thought)