Meantime
Tonight at two a.m. the clocks go back.
I’ll wake to find I’ve gained an extra hour.
It’s such a simple act: I merely turn
the hands, recounting time until at last
those sixty minutes are forever gone,
absorbed in some dimension far from thought.
With shortening days I start to give more thought
to coming celebrations, tracing back
familiar routes. I picture friends long gone,
recalled when midnight chimes the magic hour.
As Auld Lang Syne links next year to the last,
with gin-soused lips I kiss each face in turn.
Unsought reflection never fails to turn
towards more tender memories: the thought
of childish wriggling from frail Grandma’s last
thin grasp, foul-breathed and bony in her high back
chair. If I could reinvent that shameful hour!
The stone inscription palls: the chair is gone.
Stand by your desks for second bell has gone.
I scanned the playground, keen to take my turn
at teasing Stinky through the lunchtime hour,
then hid her games kit, laughing at the thought
of tears and how she’d fight to keep them back.
We never picked her: she was always last.
I sold my soul mate in one mad half hour
of screwed delusion. My true lover, last
to heed the office gossip, wept. I thought
we’d be together always. Now he’s gone.
It’s only in my dreams he does not turn
away and vow he’ll never take me back.
I chose the home. It made good sense. That last
lean visit, when my father’s mind had gone,
we sat as strangers, meaning to go back
when there was time. He must have had a turn
that night. Who knows? He never rang. They thought
he did not suffer in his final hour.
Each wasted hour regretting what has gone!
I’ve learnt at last that I must try to turn
from futile thought: there is no going back.