Livelong Day

It’s gone thirty years since this light steel disc

                                   warmed to his skin,

sixty and more since I laid my child’s ear

                                   closer to hear

what I could not read (for who goes there?

                                   to Babylon, hourly):

my play-time shortened by the whisper of a tick,

                                   its sprung mechanism,

light-tongued creature, touch-ing, touch-ing

                                   (so whose time is it?)

his wrist’s pale skin, my wondering ear,

                                   and I praying

for more time to play, as the calculating thing

                                   dialed the sunshine’s

livelong light and stole my day

                                   with three thin hands—

nothing like hands, but insect feelers

                                   that rounded up

my first garden’s early dream-time,

                                   snaffled away.

Then, it was only play-time I’d save

                                   from the scuff of  its count,

its too smooth run of minutes, hours,

                                   its winning way;

now, finding it silent in a drawer,

                                   I bend my ear

and wind the tiny tractor wheel

                                   to hear it still

touch-ing, touch-ing, after thirty years,

                                   his wasted wrist

raced to its ending, and the child’s child-wish,

                                   long vanished, dismissed,

to stay in a garden as light diminished.

                                   I strap its cold

close on my wrist-bone, the leather-worn eyelets

                                   stretched (almost torn)

to the buckle-tongue, till the fit’s my own,

                                   my anyone’s timing,

and listen—to the doomsday drummer in it—

                                   just for a tick.