Time Poem by Chaz Walker

Time carves out existence like a block of steel,
To purpose the soul with balance
And measures,

To declare forward: forward, and backwards
The past, a memory to catalog memories
In a sequenced timeline.

But why not let days flow into days,
And years assemble into other years
Without any calendar at all?

Who invented the second? The minute?
The blasphemous hour, who barks
With a battalion of skeleton soldiers?

Was it you, dear lonely caveman philosopher
Who threw skinny stones at the sun: to dial-up
A connection with your future brethren?

Or you, the first Egyptian child farmer
Who irrigated fields of crops with nourishment,
And life: to catch the season with a sail?

How did you know what time was to begin with?
Did time tell you? Or did you invent it?

Now, we are bound to the weight and duties of it,
As if it was a government to our being.

It taxes us in our sleep, and adds wrinkles
To our faces when we rise.

Without time, we could live forever
Years old without anybody calling us liars.