Poetry Friday, Week 6: A Timely Prompt

Linda at TeacherDance  is full of hearts in many different forms.  Thank you for hosting today.

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A Clock and Books

© Jone Rush MacCulloch
2022
Mixed media (photos, magazine, ink, napkin)

Created for Laura Shovan’s 10th Annual February Poetry Project: “Time”. This quote from Tom Robbins speaks to me:  

“A book no more contains reality than a clock contains time. A book may measure so-called reality as a clock measures so-called time; a book may create an illusion of reality as a clock creates an illusion of time; a book may be real, just as a clock is real (both more real, perhaps, than those ideas to which they allude); but let's not kid ourselves - all a clock contains is wheels and springs and all a book contains is sentences.” 
― Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

As well as  this quote from Albert Einstein: “Time is relative.”
The clock is a photo of my great uncle’s clock which he won at the 1908 Bloomsburg Fair in Pennsylvania.  It’s sitting on a photo of my grandmother’s tatting.

My poem is inspired from a writing on Taylor Mali's blog. I used the "I Remembered" prompt to get started I had the privilege of listening to his talk last night, "Debt of Memory."  It was exactly what I needed, especially the term "augmented memory.'

I Remembered

The American Mantle Clock
chimed during family dinners

Great-uncle Jim’s prize,
won at the 1908 Bloomsburg Fair

Traveled from the Pennsylvania woods
to the California high desert in the 40’s

Perched atop the handcrafted china closet,
feather dusted by many young hands
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I raced the clock to finish,
diagramming sentences before the hour

of gloaming as the wheels and gears
of my mind spun stories in syncopated time

© 2022, jone rush macculloch

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