Father Time by Christine A. Brooks

t
i
c
k
t
o
c
k
The grandfather
clock, keeps
time, twelve
gongs. She
has made
it to another day.
Silence, outside the
dining room window
where she lay
dying. Darkness shrouds
the small house that
holds her body, while
her soul prepares for flight.
Tick tock. The grand clock just won’t stop
TICKING
If only it would, she could stay. The chime builds now,
at quarter past the hour. I wish I could hold the hands
of Father Time. Hold them tight, so they could not move, could
not take her to the place I cannot visit.
The silence is pierced by the crunch of a slow moving car on the ice. Where
are they going at this late hour? Tick tock. The pressure is mounting. The chime
ever building on the grand clock, as it reminds me with every tick and every tock that
the night is fading, time is winning. And I am not in charge. Stop! Stop! I yell to the
fucking clock. But it is deaf to my pleas, and just keeps marching on to the Valley of Death,
playing its death march tick tock tick tock.
Half past the hour now the chime is louder, longer now taunting me. I hold her close stroke
Grief takes
silent?
____________________________________________________________
Christine A. Brooks is a graduate of Western New England University with her B.A. in Literature, and is currently attending Bay Path University for her M.F.A. in Creative Non Fiction. Most recently a series of poems, The Ugly Five, are in the summer issue of Door Is A Jar Magazine and her poem, The Writer, is in the June, 2018 issue of The Cabinet of Heed Literary Magazine. Three poems, Puff, Sister and Grapes are in the 5th issue of The Mystic Blue Review. Her vignette, Finding God, will be in the December issue of Riggwelter Press, and her series of vignettes, Small Packages, was named a semifinalist at Gazing Grain Press in August 2018. Her poem, The Monarch, will be published in October, 2018 and The Man will be published in November, 2018 in the Amethyst Review.

