HOURGLASS

Time began with our ancestors knowing
Of movement, and cycles, and changes ongoing.
Is time a thing to squander or conserve?
No. Time’s only the change we observe.
It’s an unending continuum devoid of space,
Through which we recklessly tend to race.

We often lack wisdom and sensibility
In matters of peace and sustainability.
In life we rush blindly through risky events
Into failure or success, minor or immense.

Across fleeting nanoseconds, epochs, and eons,
We’re captives of time – mere prisoners and peons.
We grasp in vain for the ways or the means
To delay obsolescence of time-limited genes.

If hours and minutes I could find,
I’d act for the well-being of humankind.
I’d flip my hourglass for life-limited others
To give needed heartbeats to sisters and brothers
Who’d use time with prudence, their lives to extend.
They’d flourish, or actualize, or just be, or transcend.

This poem was conceived and composed in the past;
To be read in the present, then fade away fast.
I sit here, mind blank, unproductive again.
I’ve slowly let "now" devolve into "then.”

Time extension, so elusive, can never be known
Except in, perhaps, the Twilight Zone.

Will Walsh