The Time Trick

 “It all went so fast,” fools say at the end forgetting,

as fools do,

how the math class minute hand glued his finger to the clock face,

the duration of nausea,

the length of the drive across the Mojave Desert after the air conditioning broke,

the number of years until retirement,

the wait for love to appear,

the quicksand after it vanished.

“It all went so fast,” fools say,

eyes ever-fixed on the clock,

instead of the moment,

crushing decades into one sentence. 

   As the kind of fool that fools himself I also marvel at Times's  speed as seen through the retro-scope. But, why are we so surprised? The rear view mirror reveals years compressed into seconds because we are not reliving all those moments in "real" time.

   The handless clock in the picture has been hanging on my gallery wall for eight years. Still, every so often my eyes absent-mindedly search her face for an answer she cannot give me – the time.

   Instead, she reminds me to look not to look at her but at the present.

-Erie Chapman

Photoart – "Eternity's Clock" by Erie, 2016 & 19