An Alchemy for Time

Where did we ever get the idea that we could “make time” for anything in our lives? I caught myself asking this morning. My inner monologue part self-recrimination, part pie-in-the-sky planning. How can I make time for…

If I am honest with myself, this time I want to make is actually a story of “a time” that I can hold as a token from a past. Most of my thoughts about making time are connected to results of some sort – not to the doing, not to the being in that time – but a story of having done something. Accomplished. Survived. Been.

Time slips through my hands
but like the fish I’d caught
that time at sea
with bulging eyes and razor gills
that stained the hull with blood

That time I was, you
were, we were we spent ourselves
a spell as we caught
ourselves in a well like frogs
like cats, all familiars

We float, we sink, we
die a thousand times too soon