In soft afternoon sunlight, flopped on my small yellow couch, I look over to the shadowed side of the room.

My apartment is pretty sparse, but in pride of place upon some modular furniture there is a white marble mantle clock that used to belong to my grandparents.

It is imperfect: part of the pedimented top is gone; it only works sometimes when I wind it up.

But it is beautiful, particularly its face of ornate numbers surrounded by a bronze filigreed bezel.

I majorly coveted the clock when I would go visit my grandparents as a girl.

After once being shown how to open the glass cover over the face—such a satisfying click when it opened—I  was unable to resist doing so each time I saw the clock, lightly touching and pushing its hour and minute hands, probably contributing to its current damaged state.

Looking at it now takes me back to my grandparents’ home and those moments when I would wander around the house and yard while the adults conversed in the kitchen, the hush of the house a little nerve-wracking.

Where were my grandparents when they bought this clock?

What did they think would happen for the rest of their lives?

I research the clock’s provenance online, looking for the maker and model, and imagine my grandfather selecting this particular clock with care, wanting something to fit the house, the family.

I open a YouTube video of a horologist—who knew?—and he greets me amid a pleasant patter of ticking from the collection of clocks behind him.

I look again at my clock.

Find the meaning in the marble.

Those ornate numbers, that shape of classical architecture—they quietly reproach me.

Am I going about my hours with the dignity that these shapes suggest?

In the face of the clock I see the face of my grandfather, and while the clock does not strike, I hear the voice of my grandfather intoning slowly and deliberately—maybe trying to sound a bit wiser than he was—but wise all the same.

I am still attracted to all things shiny, but hopefully am more restrained now.

I stop the video, and the room is quiet again.

My smartphone is the only accurate timepiece in my apartment, and it of course does not tick.

It has its own sort of shine, a friendly colorful brightness from the dotting of apps on the home screen, but to save the battery I have set it to go black after a few minutes.

Afternoon sun in my hometown.
Yellowing the rooftops of houses from my childhood,
Homes I saw en route to school, day after day.
Their fragile love and humanity so apparent.
On frigid mornings, Christmas lights and tacky lit-up plastic Santas and Reindeer rolled by, a personal parade for my grade-school eyes.
I took them in, their porches, their lawn ornaments, their wind-chimes,
And they steadied and calmed me.
I have always had an affinity for the strong broad slants of afternoon sun
Somehow companionable and ancient and unknowable at once.
In the rush of maturation and frenzy of the quick mean world
I know I have lost sight of this sun, these homes, this steadiness.
There's an added weight to this sight now, the weight of years,
but now, perhaps, a recognition, a likeness.

I have been wearing a bracelet of green beads bought from a charity,
With a thin gray circular disc (a severe charm!) attached,
Upon which the word GROWTH in blunt font is raised.
And then, beneath that, what I assume to be
The symbol for GROWTH in the script of some dialect:
It looks like a roughly scratched “T,” somewhat like a dagger.
As I go throughout my day the circle brushes my wrist;
If it were sharper it could lightly cut the skin.
In odd moments I’ve shaken the beads and repositioned
The charm so it laid flat against the back of my hand,
As though I could absorb the sentiment.
It would be a little indulgent on its own,
But in the chaos of my current days I do it bemusedly.
Lately I have been thinking of how personalities encounter history
And are changed.  Does the person shape history or does history
Shape the person?  There has to be cosmic selection
At work for some—obviously Voltaire, for example, was made for the French, For the Enlightenment!  But time breaks over all of us
Totally.  Time shapes us interestingly.  The craziness and force
Of everything I’ve brushed up against lately has surprised me,
And worn me down somewhat.  
I was surprised, too, sliding on the bracelet for the first time,
when I saw the big green beads interrupted by
The charm's message.