1930's New Haven Westinghouse clock

1930's New Haven Westinghouse clock

From mantle-top to unforgiving brick 

and down the dust-thick basement steps it sunk 

like bone, fossilized beneath a stack 

of Reader’s Digest  deep in the house’s strata. 

With feline curves the whisker second hand 

arches its back to scrape the foggy glass, 

warped by what it counts. The oak-wood stand 

is coated yellow with years. The door in the back 

ajar, rust-red gears are interlocked 

in arthritic prayer, and footsteps up above 

are all that mark the rhythmic tock and tick 

of time: another thing, like me,
that breaks itself.


- published in 21st Century Flow