by Chen-ou Liu
time stands still
on the old clock above
the counter in the ER
I wait
patiently
for my turn
walking out the door
casting no glances
we pass each other by
then disappear
snow traces the weight
of each burden
If on a Winter’s Night a Patient (Cherita Sequence)
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Chen-ou,
We know what time is until asked what it is… your poem adds to its mystery so wonderfully. Thank you.
Still
Still
Neal
Neal, I enjoyed reading your thoughtful comment. It reminds me of St. Augustine.
In his groundbreaking work, Confessions, St. Augustine claims:
“What then is time? If no one asks me, I know: if I wish to explain it to one that asked, I know not: yet I say boldly that I know, that if nothing passed away, time past were not; and if nothing were coming, a time to come were not; and if nothing were, time present were not.”
Time is the subject of Book XI of Confessions, in which St. Augustine explores the relationship between God’s timelessness and his creation’s experience of time. In his view based on Christian theology, God is “outside of time;” St. Augustine declares, “Time itself being part of God’s creation, there was simply no before.” God has no business with time, and in his eyes all time is present as one unified moment, which is called eternal now in Christian theological terms. Human beings as God’s creation, however, experience time, which St. Augustine views as a soul-wrenching quality. Although experiencing the passage of time, he suggests that time may be a kind of ‘distension,” a stretching of the soul, which is a sign of distance from God – creation has fallen away from God’s eternity into successive time.
Thanks for sharing!
Chen-ou