Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Clocks




Clocks


The universe is a clock. Its intricate mechanisms produce the music of the spheres.

The body is a clock—a variable timepiece.

A poem is a clock—listen carefully and you can hear it ticking.

Music sounds like a clock.

Roosters are clocks—take my word!

The heart is a clock. What time is it in “heart”?

Elephants are ponderous—they move to a slower beat.

Can you feel time moving, without a beat?

The ultimate spring is entropy.

Time is bigger than the universe, but without the universe, we can’t measure it.

Archimedes imagined a place outside of time and space, but he knew he couldn’t go there.

Thinking about time and the equations of relationship in the universe is like pretending that what you do isn’t a part of the clock. But you know it is.

The clock is everything—in us and around us and beyond us.

The slow dance of our coming together, and our drifting apart.

The way we feel when time seems not to have a purpose.

Time seems to be happening in one direction, but this is an illusion. There is no place we can go to to escape this dilemma.

When you arrive, you have only begun; there is no exit.

We are trapped in time, but are free to think of alternatives, even if we can’t choose them.

I would like to save a little time for the end, but where would I keep it? I don’t have a container that would hold it.

If you could stretch time, would it be like stretching matter, like salt-water taffy?

Would it bounce like silly putty?

Balls that bounce decay in time—and so do the balls.

Pound said that slowness is beauty.

If we could slow time down, would it seem any slower, or would it feel just the same as “normal” “ordinary” time?

Is time a question, or an answer?

If time is a dimension, where is it?

A roomful of clocks, all ticking at different rates. A roomful of babies, all crying.

What is the interval?

Mathematics tells us we can measure time with increments, instruments.

Take away the sun, and the moon, and the earth, and time is relative to other bodies in empty space.

An orbiting planet is like the hand of a clock, uselessly turning.

Time is an order of increments.

Like a stopwatch, we could start anywhere.

Stoplights are clocks.

Stop the train, I need to get off.

A particle that “lives” for only a fraction of a millisecond is a clock.

Don’t look back, Satchel Paige said, because something might be gaining on you.

Daylight savings is like trying to cheat time.

The genetic code--the DNA--is a clock.

Nobody gets to beat the clock.

It's getting late.

5 comments:

J said...

Sounds somewhat Spinoza-ish, Sir F.--granted determinism (even in poetic form) does not lack a certain plausibility, certainly in regard to the "natural world", and most human actions, for that matter. Yet at a certain point (ie rational thinking, at least with sane humans...a rarity) we humbly dissent from strict determinism. Perhaps read some Bricmont regarding this issue, that is, assuming you can handle some tweaking of yr cognitive polarities .

Ed Baker said...

of course UHAUL know who's clock this one (of his many) is:

http://ih0.redbubble.net/work.142134.12.flat,550x550,075,f.two-dali-clocks.jpg
and

if it wasn't for my Whole Life Insurance Policy agent sending me a birthday card every year since 1962 I wouldn't know what time it is... or care.

Gary B. Fitzgerald said...

Dear Mr. Faville:

You have hit upon one of my favorite topics. If you will indulge me, following are four poems on the subject that I am hoping you and your readers might enjoy.

GBF



Time

Time once measured
by sun and moon
and the balance of the days,
the slipping of each
from dark to dark,
keeping all in order,

now measured by fleet
seconds and hours,
the ticking of the clock,
moving ever faster between
full and final quarter,
need and obligation,
as we slip from sparse
to stark.

Copyright 2009 – Tall Grass & High Waves, Gary B. Fitzgerald



Time

So time, old friend,
such times we've had…
fast and slow,
good and bad. I remember
that time in school
when I thought the day
would never end.
I remember my first date
when you just flew away.
So many songs and poems
written about you.
You’re famous! But we were
close and personal,
you and I. Remember?
You aided me.
You wounded me.
You were my saviour,
as often my betrayer.
So time, old friend,
I never thought I'd see the day,
after all that we've
been through together,
that you would finally sit down
and tally, then look up at me and say
time to pay.

Copyright 2008 – HARDWOOD-77 Poems, Gary B. Fitzgerald


Time

“When I was a boy, time didn’t seem so fast.
You could savor the moment. Things seemed to last.
School days never ended but summer took forever,
playing games or lazy fishing , waiting for dinner.
But now that I’m older it seems like time’s passed
before I even spent it, and now that I consider it,
I think it’s going even faster.”

I believe this is true, I replied.
I think Einstein even proved it. Consider this:
if the gravity at a black hole slows time,
then it’s lack must surely speed it.
So if gravity weakens as the Universe expands,
then wouldn’t time be going faster?

Likewise, Einstein’s identical twins:
if one travels for an hour near the speed of light
when he returns in an hour he’ll find his brother
is now twenty years older.
So if high velocity shrinks time,
then its decrease must surely stretch it.
If the expansion of the Universe is slowing,
and gravity decreasing, if velocity is waning,
then wouldn’t time be going ever faster?

But don’t take it from me…take it from you.
Reconsider your time when you’re seventy-two.

Copyright 2010 – Ponds and Lawns – New and Corrected Poems, Gary B. Fitzgerald



The Antiques Store

Time is hard to comprehend
(as is anything without end)

but seeing this rusted old cookie can
I wonder how many grubby little fingers
that once snatched chocolate chips
and fresh pecans now hang on the brown,
paper-skinned hands of old men.

This small wooden horse now bare
of even paint anymore, whose happy young
rider died of old age forty years ago,
made me realize that my mother’s
cookie cans, my grandmother’s rocking chair,
even my own once precious toys,
might be in stores for sale somewhere.

I realized that time is hard to comprehend.
(as is anything with an end)

Copyright 2008 – HARDWOOD-77 Poems, Gary B. Fitzgerald

J said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
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