Time’s Eccentric Stamp

If I could read – the mottled markings back of either
hand are Time’s eccentric stamp revealing right-of-
access phrases, use-by-dates for scanning at an entry
door – fingers with erratic angles sing as quavers in a
music score I vaguely orchestrate, yet I can see them
there with utter clarity. I still hear the World a-breathing
sweet between its choking bouts – seething with
indifference, impersonally elite and I misunderstand,
I know I’m much too small to take sincerely!

The thought sustains me She’s the mother of our
being, maternal feelings richly flow through all of
Time’s meanderings. Her love grew in a mother’s
touch of whom from breast to breast I knew, whose
lips caressed and arms embraced. Was I graced less
I would not love without a reservation. Nor see such
love munificent given in unending apathy. Love me
if you must, She says, it’s all I am, will ever be, for I am
all of you – while you are merely part of me.

She wakes me every day with messages the same; I
see the text in symbols of earthiness, silence is the
key to long and deeper meaning. She reflects a quiet
of greater depth expecting understanding. Succour
me with feeling’s all she asks, be less yourself and
more of me. This I understand. Her University has no
favourites in the learning game, there is no secret to
our origins or whence we came, truth is Time’s
eccentric stamp on back of ageing hands.
© 27 December 2007, I. D. Carswell