I have collected clocks, chickens,
plates and owls.  In this room where I
savored the sounds and sights of my
long ago dismantled fragments. I reside

alone.

What
should have been
passages to

this, my old age,

it's the clocks I liked the best. They
drove you crazy.

It was always the same.

I'd sail forth on my Journey
of Discovery.  Not for long.

You wanted me to be smaller.
Less involved.  Life to you
was a spoonful.  Rationed
in a war without things.

It was the ticking of the
clocks as they went away
this last time.

It is the ticking of my
surrendered
soul you are left with.

I wait for the last
object to leave.  Then
we will be all but
a tick of time,

alone.

Caroline Shank