Time arrests us forward like an
unrelenting tide beneath the skin,
moving breath to breath,
the first cry to the last thought,
it is the loom on which our days are
drawn and stretched from soft
arrival into dusk,
and the universe is the creator:
folding duration into hydrogen,
into the slow burn of stars
collapsing toward darkness,
with time curled inside each atom
like a closed fist of light
waiting to open,
because time possesses matter
and gravity is its ancient verb.

Yet somewhere in the landscape
behind our eyes,
caught in quantum synapses,
imagination slips time’s steely thread,
turns sideways to sneak through the fine weave,
and for one un-clocked moment we are vast,
we are the fire before it knows it’s burning,
we are boundless,
un-sequenced, nearly free,
until the pulse of life returns,
as it must,
the clock hand strikes,
and we are carried,
we are slipping,
gently, gently, on.

 

22/7/2026