HOURGLASS
When I get time I know what I’ll do:
I’ll simply slow down, and begin tasks anew.
I’ll be less busy (to alleviate stress).
Life would be simpler. Nevertheless,
I could instead become busier, creating the illusion
Of more available time (which would be a delusion).
Time began with primitives knowing
of movement, and cycles, and changes ongoing.
Is time a thing to squander or conserve?
No. Time’s only the change we observe.
Time’s an unending continuum without space,
Through which we recklessly tend to race.
Unstable leaders lack wisdom and sensibility
In matters of peace and sustainability.
They blunder through irreversible events
Creating consequences dire and immense.
If hours and minutes I could find,
I’d act for the well-being of humankind.
I’d flip my hourglass for disabled others
To give needed heartbeats to sisters and brothers
To use with prudence I’m sure, 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 again let my "now" devolve into "then."
“When” I get time will depend on “how.”
(Ultimately, of course, I cannot “get” time now.)
Across fleeting nanoseconds and epochs and eons,
We’re captives of time – mere prisoners and peons.
We have neither the ways nor the means
To delay obsolescence of time-limited genes.
Time extension, so elusive, can never be known
Except in, perhaps, the Twilight Zone.

Will