The radio clock
The radio clock on our bedroom mantelpiece
believed in time: one second
followed another like a confident decision.
The accuracy is praiseworthy, we said,
contemplating the loss or gain
of one second in every million years.
It thought time would last
for ever. We too
were fond of time, the flow of time,
its arrow pointing
to the future. We held
the future like presents
we couldn’t yet open;
there were stars and trees, silver
and blue and gold, on the paper.
We did not think
about lost presents, or a time
when presents stopped.
Outside the snow fell…
it did not melt.
We had the exuberance of snow.
*
So emphatic a conjunction. The dent
of our bodies on the bed
as they merged like minute merging into minute
became their dent in the fabric of space-
We were comfortable living in time; the melting
of snow did not yet threaten us.
Our landscape was snow, shining and crisp;
holding our days it seemed to sweep
into the distance.
*
I said Is there a way to predict avalanches? -
that helter skelter of minutes rushing
towards destruction, shifting soft snow,
as when the hands of the radio clock raced round
to catch up with a new time. The clock
had no answers, knew nothing
of the loss of days.
Daphne Gloag
To be published in Scintilla as having first prize in the 2009 short poetry competition