Time Poem by Nishtha Trivedi

Tick-tock. The seconds fall
as heavy footsteps;
the steps of time coming closer,
gongs roaring, alarms blaring and all
like an entire orchestra of clocks
giving a thunderous bow
at the curtain’s call.

Seemingly its own entity, time
warps at will-
seconds of distress
to stretched hours they climb,
hours of joy
slashed to fleeting seconds,
as summer hardens to wintertime.

Time, how I long to make it last!
freeze it, hold its ethereal hand
and never let go,
just once, step into the past.
I lie, unable to accept that, alas!
the last thing you can trust time to be is long-
hate being stalled at this impasse.

We sit, paralyzed, at the mercy
of time, with its tornadoes of woe
in contrast to fountains of tranquility,
that emerge and vanish at time’s whims and fancies.
As it stops or flies or runs out,
we remain chained slaves
of the future we cannot foresee.

Through the clock’s glass wall
they glare; the hands of time.
Through the curves of the hourglass
they mock; the sands of time.
Gusts of wind, gushes of water
carrying us, always in the dark,
and all we can do, is hang on.