TICK TOCK

It’s an old clock, French, ornate

who knows what ancestor got it

so many years ago.

Sometimes it stops, stored in a box

or back of a cupboard, under a bed

when somebody dies or forgets.

But, like DNA it winds around and onward;

just needs a key and someone to turn it.

In my tiny temporal life’s glimpse

 it chimes throughout my childhood;

the good old Edwardian habit

of winding all the clocks on Sunday;

then it returns in later years

to mark these elder days. 

But it’s not just a clock -

a reminder of Time-passing;

a mechanism, a memory.

It’s my parents’ turning the ritual weekly key, keeping it alive:

forebears likewise, on and on

• and now my progeny and I, too.

It chimes the wee hours through

till the jackdaws awaken;

dawns and dusks rolling around

our solar timepiece, reciprocal, 

delineating our Circadian bio-rhythmic chronology.

It’s like a crotchety oldie,

awkward to move,

commandeering prime place on the mantle;

requiring sweet-spot listening-skills -

of tipping or tilting to precise angles

to get the pendulum going again.

It’s also a friendly accompaniment

through the sleepless hours;

a hypnagogic backdrop lullaby.