A Truthful Clock
Clock’s on the oven. It says it’s time to get up. The clock tells the truth.
Poems
Poetry and verse from young voices
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Clock’s on the oven.
It says it’s time to get up.
The clock tells the truth.
As I lie in my bed,
I smell
The cold winter air
And my pajamas.
It is early morning,
About six o’clock.
I yawn,
And lean back down on my pillow.
I sigh.
As I climbed onto the ladder to my bunk bed,
Cries exploded from the open window.
I tried to eavesdrop
But heard only
Blabbering voices.
Gazing out the window, I observe the teal ocean. Its waves thrash against the biggest rocks I’ve ever seen, but in its violence, I see only beauty.
Its blue is that of a turquoise crayon six-year-old me would firmly grip in her tiny hands. She would scribble on a blank page, filling it with what she saw in her tiny green eyes as the most wonderful drawing in the world.
As the clouds grow dark,
We start to relax.
We play a game of shapes of clouds.
All of a sudden, water starts to fall
And we still lie there,
all wet and out of breath.
I watched the water. It was still. No ripples, no waves, no tides. No fish of any kind. It was not a pond, a stream, an ocean, or a lake. It was a pot. A pot filled with water. And then it began to bubble, and then it began to boil. And I made soup. However, I had no carrots, no cabbage, no cucumbers. No vegetables of any kind. It was not a broth, nor a bouillon, neither a bisque or a consommé.
You are reading this poem now.
I wrote it “now,”
but by the time you’re reading it,
I will have written the poem in the past.
Oh, the functions of time!
Past, now, soon . . .
Time commands every word.
What is now?
It is gone, but will come again,
right now.
Distracting myself,
busy all day,
cannot accept another day lost to
time.
Time—
the old enemy,
yet friend,
it makes me a day older
yet wiser.
Another day of my life is
gone.
Past.
But I know that I did something that day;
I did not sit around,
waiting
waiting
waiting
for it to pass, and
waiting
waiting
waiting for the next day to come.
The backseat car window
holds a view
I never want to lose:
A normal-looking house.
Our house.
Becoming
smaller
smaller
smaller
until I can barely see it in the
horizon
of blue, sympathetic sky
and wide wheat prairie
tousled in the breeze.
My favorite sight
is out of sight
forever.
Goodbye, Earth:
rising
rising
I am rising
above the grass,
and falling toward the moon.