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.