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As we grow older, days move over to give their space to weeks, so seven are squeezed as four and it’s no wonder in midlife, find the months in sudden awareness now; they fly by faster! As age increases, time can hasten with fewer left to speed us yonder. As but twelve becomes only four, then the seasons flow into each other— too quickly. Watch a Springtime quicken and melt into the heat of Summer which, scarcely here, is elbowed, taken as golding leaves Fall into Winter. There, all of concrete Time is One, Eternal, when this Life is done. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Addendum—where is the Math? Axiomatic: Things that are equal to the same thing are equal to each other. If 7 = 4 and 12 = 4, then 12 = 7 (Pathetic fallacy?) |
Author notes
Very old people will understand this perfectly
Please tell me what you think
Comments
1 - 11 of 11
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I really like it! I'm not exactly old, but I think I get the idea of it. It reads so easily, it seems personal and very unique.
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Charlotte,
Thank you for finding this. Even in the teens it had already changed for me, that especially in summer, when I had jobs to do, the weeks went by faster (or felt that way) than when I was a little kid with endless days by the lake.
Check it out from time to time over the years when soon there is more to do than we have time for and the weeks flash by.
I guess it would not be as obvious for those who are bored. Is that why we call it a drag? -
Charlotte,
Thank you for finding this. Even in the teens it had already changed for me, that especially in summer, when I had jobs to do, the weeks went by faster (or felt that way) than when I was a little kid with endless days by the lake.
Check it out from time to time over the years when soon there is more to do than we have time for and the weeks flash by.
I guess it would not be as obvious for those who are bored. Is that why we call it a drag?
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Another beautiful piece of writing. Again you've made a poem that is entirely your own and very original. It was interesting how everything connected so simply yet it gave us a complicated idea to think about.
I love how you started it off and it is true, days seem to go so fast now it's a wonder we're all so tired, we barely notice whether it's Wednesday or Tuesday.
This is an exquisite piece, truly in a league of it's own. The way everything fits together evenly though it would seem unexplainably mangled if you were just to write these thoughts down normally.
You are truly talented. -
Although I have noticed that the more I squeeze into a day, the longer it seems. Those days of nothingmuchness of wasted time are the ones that have gone the minute you realise you should have kept hold of the string.
I was looking at the leaves that have burst forth over the last couple of weeks, and thought , as I think every Spring, how when the trees were bare, there was a split second of wondering if they would always be so. Now they have blossomed and leafed, I think of how the dusty leaves of Summer feel forever even now, because there is still some yearning left that wants the bite of Autumn. Then as you say (I think) in the poem, somehow it all seems to concertina into Winter. We don't have long Winters here in England anymore. In fact we don't really have any Winters period.
Can you tell by the rambling that I have fewer days ahead than I have behind? -
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Full-width reply box!!! WOW
Dereva, I am glad that you joined us! Good, even great reviews are frequent and could be the norm here, but by too few. You are needed here.
The breathless praise that passes for critique in Allpoetry, and sad to say, generous portions of illiteracy, are also found here. Today a writer wondered "y" she doesn't get " n e 1" to read her stuff.
Non sequitur.
Laughed at your holding the string... Almost all of my days are crammed tight. "Too many irons in the fire." When totally involved, Time ceases. Many times I have suddenly realized as birdsong announces the dawn, that I have not been to bed, and even more, am not tired yet. Momentum carries itself effortlessly. Eventually, sleeping the clock around restores the system. People who spend their years of retirement playing Bridge are wasting their privilege.
The analogy of Time as accelerating seasonal change was generally accurate when seen as an afterview. That I am within spittin' distance of my eighties made the view real and easily extrapolated into the blissful end. I hesitate to think what I will say when I teeter on the edge of a century!
When I wrote this, I wrote it from the point of view of a northern Canadian, where seasons are very clearly delineated. Or were.
In 1966 we had a January when for over three weeks, the warmest temperature never rose above minus forty Celsius, and sometimes approached minus fifty at night. Cars rode on square tires, thump-thumping until they warmed, footsteps squeaked. We have not seen that even for a single day for more than twenty years.
Off on a tangent : Re global warming.
Delay sits firmly in the hands of conservatives and corporations. More should have been done.
Warming is evident here as it cannot be where winter is merely a rainy season. That you are witnessing the loss of winter may be an indication of what even polar regions will soon see. If so, wise people will no longer live on sea coasts or floodplanes as icecaps melt. Hilltops will be crowded, and where will the crops grow?
Even now, Permafrost is no longer permanent judging by far-north "snow highways" where in photographs on TV, trucks sank down on their axels. Millennia of bionic debris trapped within it will thaw, and rot, and release methane. The immensity boggles.
It is not only meltwater that threatens. Gasmask anyone? Will some future lightning storm set off a final KA-BOOM?
As I said, a tangent--but a real concern.
Thank you for visiting here. Previews 50¢
Terry
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hey robert frost
that was depressing, not funny
you made it seem easy and had alot of BIG words but its waisted when i read it to have a laugh and get reminded of how short life is. on any intelectual level, it aint funny
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Many thanks, dogboy
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From a better reply box thirteen letters wide:
Dogboy, thank you for a refreshing view of this poem.
A new point of view is always welcome, and yours speaks from that happy stage where experience has not yet painted the world in more muted colours. I can remember seeing white-haired people around, but they were even older than my grandparents, and I pretty well placed them with the furniture they sat on. Irrelevant to a child, they had little value unless they chose to speak with me, and few did. Mostly they just smiled and kept on knitting.
It never occurred to me then that seventy years later I would be like that, and that the life of "one of the ancient ones" could possibly be such a fascinating time, learning new skills constantly-- and new words even yet. I am a part of all the lives around me, those who--bless them, have invited me in, and my children who have children of their own, and some of my grandchildren old enough to have kids of their own.
You said, "hey robert frost
that was depressing, not funny"
It was intended more to be a strange observation, not funny, even though a few really old readers (over three-quarters of a century in age like me) will see the wonder in how the miseries that once were so hard, have melted into the heap of what we call experience, where the pain finally had been learned from, and was at last left behind. Wonderful friends have helped such a lot, far far more than they will ever know.
You said, "but its waisted when i read it to have a laugh and get reminded of how short life is."
"Wasted?" I suppose, if laughs had been the intention, but rather it described the stages Life goes through, and how they feel. Shakespeare did the same with brief descriptions.
"Short?" for some it is, but lifespans reach into the eighties now, even well beyond. I have a dear friend aged 95, who still enjoys life more than most people half her age. She is active in the community. My mother-in-law worked 8-hour days at the age of 82, as she said, "Taking care of old people." Healthy.
A car collision finally took her out.
I did not see the humour in it then (humor in US) but do, now that you have reminded me how important the trivial things were, how devastating the losses. And how their importance shrinks over time.
The laugh comes just when you thought it wasn't so bad. Replaced by worse things like the deaths of all the older people we knew, and too many younger too. That would be what you mean by depressing and I cannot argue with that. It is important to know that in loving others, compensations exist. Living beyond ourselves, there is no such thing as "old."
I suppose I should apologize for the "big words" but being a stubborn old cuss, prefer to stay who I am where the words need no dictionaries. Old habit. Axiomatic means obviously true, from Algebra.
" on any intelectual level, it aint funny."
It really was not intended to be, on any level, intellectual and not.
What is funny is the way your short comment brought out such a long one from me!
I really enjoy finding new thoughts.
Terry
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I am not very old, but I understand exactly what you mean. This poem really works well-- I am always intrigued with poems that employ math/science imagery. There's always something so deliciously kabbalistic about them.
A well-written observation on the relativity of time-- summers seem an eternity when we were children. Then they "quicken and melt."
language: 5, rhythm: 5, subject: 5, tone: 5, form: 5.
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And the next box is just the same! So I'll put it here.. BARBARA, HELP!! I'm going nutz!
The little wheel was rolling rolling, so I whapped EDIT again and got a super-size box!
Kabbalistic, or what!
Because of this stupid box-problem I seldom post from my own page anymore.
And now I cannot scroll to see yours again.
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Not your fault, CPie, and not mine either; it just hates me.
All right. The poem, the perceptive permutations of Time, and the sense of its compression as decades pass.
In childhood, each day can be reckoned as a fraction of Life already lived. One day is 1/7 of the life of a week-old baby. By the time he is a month old, a day is only 1/30. At the end of his first year, his day is 1/365 th of his lifetime. By age 10, 1/3650th By 20, the mind boggles. Think what a day would be for the geezer of 75!
Less than 1/25000 of his life. Has it lost its reality?
A conflict of logic and math. Still, no wonder the seasons flip by. I am beyond that.
Kabbalah. I had heard the term before, and the dictionary pleaded its ignorance. So did the bigger one.
Googled it and AH-Haaa! I'm glad I did not assume I knew. Gotcha.
Thank you for a great review! Not every day I learn so much! Cheers!
Terry
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Kabbalistic!
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Drat! It would not let me "edit this"
7-digit wide box. It would have deleted both yours and my painfully narrow message.
THAT IS NOT WHAT I wanted to say!!
I'll send and try again.
Terry
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