Time II

Slips slithers slides through fingers stretched hands cupped hats extended buckets placed can't be kept hard enough to find.

Stolen from us, usually, occasionally though rarely stolen back. 'Stolen moments' we call them, we hold them close, but even they still leak away (in time).

I know where it goes.

I've seen where it gathers, collides, coalesces.

It talks. Time talking with time, whispering about places it's been, spaces it's seen. It brags about the merry dance upon which it leads one and all, the tantalising times it has teasing us with its turnings.

This, in time, I learn - it needs us. Even more than we need it. We are its mirror, its sense of self. Every line our aging adds, every thought exploding in a million shards of light to regather as action or emerge as dream, it uses; uses to groom its own sense of self, of being. Without us it measures itself against itelf, splintering into nothing less than nothingness.

It can be tamed, Mother Time. If we ignore it long enough, its need to be needed grows too strong, at first a whimper and soon a wail - returning to us and begging forgiveness.

We can't help ourselves, we give in. Embrace it. Succumb to the latest of time's masked tricks.