timepiece

[Fixed the line spacing. Don't know how that got screwed up.]

"Timepiece"

Scene One [written 8.15]

Last Thursday night at 12:15

I took bus number seventeen,

intending to ride home from Loserville

and rest my weary feet.

I stepped aboard the vehicle

provided there to transport me;

I paid in change the driver's fee,

and turned to seek an empty seat.

To my astonishment, I found

nary a lonely soul around;

at this late hour, all that remained

(beside myself) was one old man

who sat pensively gazing out the window

contemplating.

I stepped forth down the aisleway,

past empty one through empty twenty-two

and stopped across the way

from this old man: seat twenty-three.

As I made myself comfortable,

I gave him the old once-over

to sort through all his eccentricities.

The man was aged beyond his years

(it showed through in his greying beard)

and draped himself under a tattered cloak,

shading his features. He

was grasping in his left hand cautiously

a willow walking-stick,

atop which was positioned a timepiece,

showing one hand pointing

to twelve and one to three.

I thought this an odd thing to carry

on one's person, but said not

a word (for fear I would disrupt

the fellow's focus). No, instead

I (keeping to myself) laid back

and took this opportunity

to close my eyes and rest my mind

and slip into a dream.

When I awoke, the bus was moving

still, and he still next to me;

but the peculiarity

that instantly stood out to me

was that his cane's timepiece showed still

one hand reaching for twelve

and one for three.

Scene Two [written 8.17]

I knew the bus had been in motion

long enough to pass at least

a few minutes of both our time;

and yet, here this man's clock seemed to

be stuck, its hands both

incapacitated. So (politely as I could)

I tapped him on the back --

he turned to face me, green eyes glowing

with a silent energy

that seemed it never could be extinguished --

and I expressed in brittle words

that there perchance could be

a problem with the workings

of the mechanism nestled in his grip.

The consequent response that left

his lips was not at all as I foresaw:

he simply chuckled to himself

and then assured me that

in fact the thing was running

just as smoothly as could ever be expected.

"See," he carefully explained,

"it's meant to tell the time.

It tells the time is 12:15,

and at this moment 12:15

is just the time it haps to be;

thus, no problem presents itself to me."

I, puzzled by his earnest words,

reached down to lift my pocketwatch

and to compare the image on its face

with that I swore to be

mistaken. Sure enough I found

my own watch thinking it to be

12:32; and this I showed off

proudly, as to prove he was at fault.

At this the old man softly grinned

and shook his head before addressing me:

"Son, knows your watch the time ?

Or does it simply know how many

times the secondhand has cleared

its sorry little orbit ? It knows

nothing of the movement of

the cosmos, or the balance of

the preordained and that yet to

be chosen. All it knows is how

to tick away one second to the next,

with no regard for any changes

that surround its silver frame.

Do me a favour, son, and take a look

outside your window there."

And so I did.

Scene Three [written 9.5]

I turned my head to see what this

peculiar stranger wanted for

my eyes. I wiped some condensation

off the glass from earlier

that day when from the sky had fallen

tears of cosmic pain, and there

I spied a lonely heart on his

way home from somewhere he did not

belong, a mother and her daughter

mid-step up the stairs to their

front door, a hurried woman with

a newspaper as cover from

the rain, a few more clumsy silhouettes

etched into night's dense, deep blue

canvas, countless parasols

in hand. I saw these figures, but

I saw them only as an image;

zooming by, but motionless,

a snapshot of their lives, and every

detail, each expression on

their faces, each position of

their limbs, characteristic of

a single freeze-frame moment in

their temporal existences.

Even the raindrops, as I looked

more closely, were, though liquid,

frozen stolid in the breathing

glacial air. I couldn't help but wonder

how the weather would react

if I unlatched the window and

invited my appendages outside.

These idle thoughts of curiosity,

however, quickly left

my head to be replaced with shock,

befuddlement at how this feat

could have been wrought, at what manner

of spell could have commanded this

entire world, presumably,

(save one bus what contained my friend

and me), to stop its actions and

surrender its mobility upon the spot.

[To be continued ...]