The Nature of Time

WE WRITE POEMS

http://wewritepoems.wordpress.com/2011/07/27/prompt-64/

asks for parallelism

POETRY POTLUCK

http://jinglepoetry.blogspot.com/2011/07/poetry-potluck-week-45-nature-and-life.html

asks us to write about Nature and Life.

THE NATURE OF TIME

The Time that rules my life

Is a very wayward creature.

It is rigidly prescribed

Yet fluidity is a feature.

So slow, so slow the seconds

When heavy hangs the time;

So short, so short the blessed days

When the living is sublime.

Last year's mad adventures

Seem but a blink away;

But oh the aeons of tick and tock

Since this time yesterday!

We recall, as days of long ago,

The era of our birth,

Yet we casually speak of the billion years

Since dinosaurs walked the earth.

Time can make our lives  seem long

As it stretches out and lingers,

Or it can make our lives seem short

As it slips between our fingers.

*

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NATURE'S CANVAS

An artist chooses carefully when a canvas is in view;

He knows exactly what's required for what he wants to do.

He'll size the canvas up and down and view it from all sides;

He'll take note of the texture and other things besides.

Does he want it pristine white, or with a touch of grey?

Does he need this size or that? And how much must he pay?

He stretches it, he fingers it, he ums and ahs a lot

Till finally he's satisfied with the canvas that he's got.

But Nature's not so choosy. Take this stretch of stony ground;

The sort that we don't notice when we're looking all around.

Unprepossessing! That's the word; with nothing worth a mention;

And why it would be chosen is beyond my comprehension.

But Nature chose to sketch on it a work that, you'll agree,

Is a delicate arrangement of leafy filigree.

*