Reflections on Time

The skin etches one molecule at a time

slowly deeper into approaching night.

The light moves across its dips and hollows,

those tiny miniature craters, as if searching

for meaning, but the meaning is only

time's movement and how it reshapes us —

time, that old rogue who waits for no-one

but marches on with the tide, into a future

that does not exist, as time is always

circular and now. The skin, though, reveals

the passage of time, regardless

of music or roses or the faces of children

(your children) looking back at you as they move,

forward or back as they overtake and surpass you.

Then, when you decide that it's merely

a man-made construct, and you construct

evidence in support of this — a new day dawns,

the sun comes up, the world is round, and you know

again it's solid geography and physics, even if some

insist time’s measured in a thin line on a cat’s back.

Written for a joust at dVerse in which we were to take a line from a poem by Brian OR Claudia and have it inspire a poem of our own. I am a bad person! Instead of choosing either team Brian or team Claudia, I was so intrigued by one particular line of each that I have used both, as my beginning and end. Either I will get disqualified or my entry will count towards both scores (which is much the same as neither).

The Water-Colour Sketcher

for Claudia Schoenfeld

In her heart is the music of light.

She doesn't worry

about capturing the exact, neat shape

of the cup with the blue flowers;

what she wants is that blue on that white,

and the half-moon swirl of the coffee

glimpsed over the rim.

She is after the blobby orange

of a sunset sky, or a pale lemon moon

reflected in dark water. Her Eiffel Tower 

curls back into distance

like a dancer abandoned to music.

Her motorbike riders, bright red,

rush towards me out of their street

and out of her picture; I see them 

swerve to miss me.

Everything's alive,

nothing is static.

It all sings.

Written in response to a dVerse prompt and the sketches of Claudia Schoenfeld. I was inspired by all rather than one. I would call her art impressionistic, and my response is very much the impression it made on me, with details jumping out from the collective effect. A quick impression — a closer look reveals there is only one rider on that bike; but never mind, I'll stay true to the first impression.