The digital clock doesn’t quite have the effect
when displacing time
as the oaken panel Grandfather clock
with gears and old fashioned Victorian
ethics that should have died at the same time
as the grieving widow…
tick, tick, tick,
all is silent elsewhere but for the slow build
up of pressure and for the briefest possible moment
the world continues spinning through the void
but then at twelve twenty and thirteen seconds
somewhere in the darkness a sun breathes
its last and goes out with the switch a light
and the snap of an astronomers fingers
and although it happened about nine hundred light
years ago, we finally stopped noticing
its far off light at that exact moment and the astronomer grieved.
At that exact second in a London street,
in amongst the black bin bags left out for the collection
and being nuzzled by the local rat as he finds
something of interest upon which to spread his disease,
a single gunshot takes the life a former heroin user
turned informant, turned father, turned leaf over, returned
to death, and he slumps in all his thirty two bulky years
silently backwards onto his next door neighbour’s
left over lamb stew.
At that exact second, lightning strikes the Earth
just outside a Yorkshire windswept moor and the
silhouette sparks the fields ablaze for a moment
and the two campers, naked in thought
but shy in ambition,
kiss for the first time through lit up canvas
and high above them on a ridge
where the insulation of the car hides the fear
of being caught,
two others with binoculars observe and feel the
calling of Yorkshire cold dreaming.
At that exact second somewhere in a studio,
the darkness on the edge of surrender
and mono brow beating
comes the guitar note that will change the world
and the drummer looks on with appreciation
and the singer, long the leader of the band
contemplates firing his long time friend
for the use of a chord in a song
that will see them make millions
but will ultimately be the downfall of the group.
In that exact second as the sun blinks out of existence,
a slot machine in a Vegas gambling house
pays out to a board, young housewife
who on the basis of being an instant millionaire
finds the courage to change her life and leave her husband
for the personal trainer with bronzed ideals
but feet of clay who will ultimately
pass onto her the gift of human barren womb
but filled with millions of gifts in their place
and early death.
In that exact second as lightning strikes
a patch of grass on a Yorkshire field, a
temple bell rings out in danger in a remote
Japanese village as all are saved within its halls
as the mountains crumble around it and the
weeks of searching for other survivors as close
to home as they dare look leads them to believe they
are the last humans alive.
In that second a furtive, prospective kiss
leads where it will and conception is achieved,
a star may have blinked out, shot with a gun
and trembled under the weight of loss
and devastation in the wake
of nature, but the sun continues to spin in
the heavens and the first smile of life
is only nine months away.
Ian D. Hall 2015