Time's Birthday
by Odin Roark

How daunting it must be
Choosing a celebratory date

Invention adrift
Save the blue veined appendages
Holding firm the drift of time
Like a floating surreal image
Making its way up 5th Avenue
On Thanksgiving Day

How buoyant Time
Yet arguably ungrounded
Measuring not how life will continue
But only how existence has passed

Each year
Month
Week
Day
Hour
Minute
And second
An ancestral funeral
Survived only by tomorrow's unknown

A system invented to archive
Circuitous syndromes
Man-made phobias
Moment by moment reality
Representing synchronous movement
Rhythmically evaporating into
The ethereal collaborative
The indeterminate character of eternity
The immeasurable
Unfathomable
Moment that is now
No wind-up needed

Still Time insists on benchmarks
Symbolic definitions
The behind and ahead of calendars
Noted by way of bell-ringing
Clock-chiming
Sun rising and setting

Unlike us
Time's validation
Knows not culinary vices
Ice cream and cake
Champagne and caviar
And those other accouterments
Hauled out to attest
Our superior intellect

Noisemakers and confetti