Miles on the Clock
or, Time in Rhyme
Husband and I went to a show where a hero of mine, the poet Henry Normal, and another poet, Brian Bilston, performed at the Corn Exchange here in Cambridge early in May. Both men manage the trick of making poetry at once meaningful, funny, and rhyming. Afterward I read more poetry — Larkin, Auden, Dickinson—and then in a fit of wild abandon, I wrote myself a poem. Here it is, with apologies in advance.
The Tyranny of the Toothbrush Timer
Two minutes for twenty-eight teeth.
I brush above, I brush beneath.
A race; I’m pressed
For time.
Such stress.
How silly.
*****
When an organism dies
Its carbon inventory is fixed.
Isotopes mixed.
With the passing of years
C-12 stays, C-14 decays
Like me.
*****
I ask the P.T.
About my wonky knee
You’ve got some miles on the clock,
Says she.
No lie.
*****
My toothbrush judders. The timer stops.
Decay allayed.
For now
Goodbye.
It’s not much of a poem and I don’t quite know why I think these words and thoughts belong to poetry rather than to prose or perhaps to the rubbish bin. But at the moment, time does feel tyrannical, whether measured by my electric toothbrush or radioactive carbon decay or the pages on my virtual calendar.
How long are you here this time, ask our friends and family in the UK. Two months, we said in early April. Ten more days, I answer them now. (I am hoping for ten more days, but that’s another story.) How quickly it’s gone, say the friends and family. Yes, I agree.
At least we have stayed long enough to see the hatching of the swans’ eggs on the riverbank near our house. For weeks whenever we crossed the bridge we looked down at the attentive parents—Cracker and Crumb— minding the nest. A few days ago, after returning from a visit to the Netherlands, there were the babies! Three fuzzy cygnets: Cream, Crisp, and Crunch.
I do miss our house, our pets, our Canadian lives, and greater proximity to much of my family. Still it will be sad to leave Cambridge. As I too often find myself saying, I can be homesick wherever I am. Canada geese as well as many Canadians— the ‘snowbirds’—go south and north with the seasons. Perhaps Simon and I can become seasonal migrants going east and west.
After all, we’ll need to check in on the swans.
An easily relatable poem, analyzing our complex relationship with time. Sometimes cruel and oppressive in how we choose to manage and measure it. And when our minds are on Do Not Disturb, life will always find a way to send us a notification.
Beautiful. I even like the poem.