Conscious of Time

Even in the lingering light of this early spring evening
the phrase seems to be everywhere.
It is ticking around the feeder with the clockwork sparrows,

it flicks between the couple across the street
as they read their evening ‘papers.
It is like that woman that you always seem to see

no matter where you go.
Is anyone not conscious of time? Nod, raise a hand,
just catch my eye if you have not long realised

that there are only so many cards in your deck,
your chip stack no taller than your fist.
Or that with every dawn another golden fish

is quietly scooped from your pond.
Here on this bed, hot from the shower, I would like to become
- if only for a second – unconscious of time,

resistant to the pull and release of the moon, to be the tiny
puncture point of the compass at the centre of the circle.
One of many circles circumnavigating the globe

or maybe ringing an unknown planet trapped in the telescope,
perhaps a hoop looping above the head of an angel
silently steering a cloud over this house.