“Life is long, and time is short.”
Oh timeless hour, you writhing mirage: Have you not the heart of the sun or the warmth of the fullest moon?
Dare you now dance, garbed in shimmering transparent promises of calm and peace, ever eluding our reach and drawing us away from the realness of now? You cowering thief, betraying me in chase and embracing me with nothingness. Even the ugliest of shadows would mock you if not for their enduring pity toward me.
Oh, how everything just goes away…
Expect it still, but it breaks us each time anyway. All the colors that defined and the songs that resonated, through the depth of moments and the breadth of memories. Every frame just fades away, with every beat of the spinning sun’s heart, every beam of the drifting moon’s face, and every star stolen by the darkest light of a timeless hour.
Oh, how I have surrendered all that which feels stolen, given freely in exchange for the intrusive urgent, or the siren of self-importance, or the hypnosis of distraction. Wicked nomad who wanders about through every season, you have slain our intentions and corrupted our dreams!
Your realness is unreal, your truths are untrue, your timelessness is time laid waste. You are not what can be, you have never been what is, you can never be the way for anything that is yet to be!
Be damned, timeless hour! You wretched phantom outcast from hell itself, strafing now behind the dawn to deceive, selling your lie yet again… An abiding presence that evaporates as quietly as the evening mists and the morning dews, staining with a residue of bitterness and hurt. Be crucified mercilessly upon the gnomon for your own sins, and alone; writhe and bleed long and dry until the compass rose is bleached by your true darkness!
This be your fate, and die you will along with the master you serve. This twisted feast you cater for the end of all things is but garnish around you, and upon a platter of ash your master will devour you. Too, he shall be consumed by his own meaninglessness and starve to dust in his own purposelessness.
For across the centuries, from stone and steel the dial has cried out your epitaph…
“TEMPUS EDAX RERUM.”
…I will yet go along – for now, in time and timelessness. For in the manner that all that has come is how it will remain. No legends unwritten, no canvases uncolored, no sonnets unperformed, no journeys unwalked or oceans unsailed.
And no bonds unmade.
Oh, how everything just goes away…
Except this, our lament and its cruel burdensome weight. Where can I set my gaze, that I might see past all that I’ve lost and all that will pass? Where can I look to redeem the meaning of my days and fill them with enduring good?
“Life is long, and time is short…”
So says again a still, small voice, whispering from the chapters of eternity itself, as if to answer this unintended prayer.
“…Life is long, and time is short.”
And so it is, so shall I see, that in the time and timelessness of now, with every beat of the spinning sun’s heart and every beam of the drifting moon’s face, I look beyond for eternal dawn and the way it’s going to be…
In memory of Billy David Cranford, my big brother who passed away this morning, having stepped out on the front porch of his home to greet the sunrise of a new day….
Joe Cranford
September 7, 2021
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Photo by Lieselot. Dalle on Unsplash
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