The old man knows the workings

Of the watches he makes, but often

Ponders the force that drives them,

That intangible flow of years,

Corroding minutes as a relentless

Wind against limestone peaks.

Watchmaker, I wonder these things

As well, watching your hands, gnarled

But still in tune with themselves as they

Go about their work, narrow spine like

An old fossil beneath the white shirt

You wear, hunched over springs and cogs.

“It is an art,” he says, “not the making of watches,

But how to track what they try and keep,” He shakes

His head and smiles a smile that puzzles me because

It is distant, somehow, a smile that keeps its own time

In a different when. “A fruitless task,” he says.

“Once, long ago, before you were even born,” the Watchmaker

Continues, and now his voice seems far away too, joining the

Smile that preceded it, here in body but lost in a memory he

Keeps close to his heart, like the pocket watch on its fine silver chain

That he always carries in the front pocket of a battered vest he is

Sometimes wont to wear, when the sign in his window says Open.

“Once, long ago,” he says again from that far off place, “I thought I had

A handle on time, because I never considered it. The young are that way,

Because it is still on their side, an ally that always walks in front of them,

Never realizing that its tongue is forked, that it walks with hands clenched

Against them, until it starts to quicken its stride.”

“Until the day comes when you glance in a mirror and don’t see the young

Man you were looking back at you, but an imposter with thinning hair shot
With a few strands of gray, a face that is perhaps more cautious, but certainly
Not the face you thought you wore just a few-hours-minutes-weeks?-ago, an

Imposter wearing a clever mask that seems to know more about you than he
Probably should, a shadow come to fill your shoes.”
The Watchmaker shakes his head. “Such is the nature of time,” he says
And then comes back to this small pocket of here and when, the space
Between that last tick and the next, our shadows long behind us in the lowering
Sun, stretching across his workroom floor and waiting for the coming night
To consume them like so many half-forgotten childhood dreams. “Such is
The nature of life, so make the most of the time you have before it leaves you behind.”

 I nod in silence as the Watchmaker finishes his work.

END

“The Watchmaker”