Ph: Life: Time In Flight! Poem by Brian Johnston

Older people all tell us time's faster, it seems,
When they think back to much younger days.
Is it true, something real, or just fanciful flight?
Time in school (ask a fool) would give snails brain malaise.
While old age knows less fact, has more dreams,
I'm not thinking at all here of personal plight.

It's my view, near the end, we'll have less time to spend
Chasing dreams, we might like to recall,
For our dreams, have been winnowed as time passes by,
I'm convinced that's a wash, although age may appall:
We've less energy we can expend,
Fewer eggs in our pantries we're hoping to fry.

Multitasking's most likely retards making hay,
For our brains, although clear, have slowed down.
And the balls you can juggle at last disappear.
For the time comes when each man must transfer his crown,
And his longings retire from the fray:
May God give me the Grace to acknowledge Time's spear!


Brian Johnston
May 5,2017

Poet's Notes:
Time's arrow (or spear in my poem) reflects a broad definition of entropy. According to the second law of thermodynamics, entropy in a closed system increases with time and thus explains the fact that time flows only in one direction. Entropy can be viewed, literally, as an expression of disorder or randomness in a system. The universe itself is heading for a cold death according to modern science!

My conclusion here is that it's not that time is going faster, but that we are going slower. We remember how much we used to be able to accomplish in a day and compare it to our present life. The difference suggests to us that time is going faster. I think that is amusing!