Time As Harlequin
Some strange trick of the mind, sleight-of-hand, time’s hands?
Idleness or fixed energy? Cards,
quickly shuffled. Hocus-pocus. The fast
card shuffler’s hands. Prestidigitation.
Pace, disguised as standard routine,
felt as fast or slow;
thus, we register our accomplishments done
by the ticking of the clock or,
the turning of the world.
Those routine beats of time,
sped up, not standard,
Or slowed down.
Our false system of reckoning,
calendars
flap quickly through their phases as if by legerdemain,
wizards of time shift the measuring.
The same degree of hour,
second, or minute altered,
grown longer or shorter by our accursed invitation,
to watch the harlequin perform,
we lose count
of the acquisition and reward
for tasks and projects completed,
only in retrospect, at the end
does deft trickery stop.
