Eagle Eyes

by Alejandro G. Hufana

Tick, tick. Though the morning is late                

Tick, tick. Time does neither love nor hate.

Time tells thin and thick

Though the weather cleave the dumb and deaf, 

Stones stray from life to death.

Famine and bounty, faded or bonded

In the dancing g dust or in the sheltered sheaf,

Time tells thin and thick

Though seconds set before the breath,

Minutes middle with human milk,

And hours house the hands that help

Resolve the tick, tick, tick

Of the motion and the moment

Only the spider weaves on an epitaph,

When weeds wedlock with weed,

Clay closes communion with clay,

No motion but the mud it rakes

No moment but the memory it meets

Mud and memory are medium

Only time has mastered

With its thin and thick 

Tick, tick, tick                                                       

Like exit and entry through a gate

Of a foam, feather, or a fate.

And only time has strains but stays

On its own opinion, oath and office

Asking no opinion from the others

If to quicken or to lag. Itself its origin.

Tick, tick, tick                                                       

Tick on. Tick in.

The foaming action at

The kitchen sink the amorous amen at

The chalk chapel, the anthem at

The garden where sweet sweetens

From juice to jam, the anonymous at

Martyrdom mentioned motely at the mass.

The arbiter and the approach at

The margin of mistake and the marriage of mind,

The after-ardor of bed and breakfast-time

To roll the wrinkle out, round the wreck about

The first baptized at the first finding

How it can play the pantomime

With the tick, tick, tick

Of its innocent imitative trick

A diamond in a diaper 

One, two, three                                     

Time is a trinity:            

Infant, father, ghost—

The found, the possessed, the lost,

The ooze last night, the matter of today

And tomorrow the decay.

But time shall not delay

Either work or play. 

Its effect or cause

Shall neither prime nor pause      

A daily dominion,

Union or reunion,

Flesh and bone

Noise and tone

Confusion, harmony.

Time is a trinity.

Time is a trinity, is a trinity                                

Tick on. Tick in. One, two, three.

From the shore-shorn shell

The tick, tick, tick

Of wombs where unborn kindreds kick,

To the booming baptismal bell

The tick, tick, tick.

Of tiny tongues on the salt they lick.   

Then the merry and the sick,            

The high-heel and the walking stick

Find their careers correct

To abuse and to respect

The tick, tick, tick

So faint and then so loud             

In swaddling and in shroud—

No everlasting middleground

But the swish of sound                                                                       

Ticking on. Ticking in.     

Timelag. Origin.

Time travels on a plane—                                                                            

Time for loss and time for gain.                                                                     

Two persons. The third

Descends—an incandescent bird

Gathering flocks of different feather

And schools of different scale.

The agony at faring farther

Than the phenomenal pale

Past, present, and ever

Idea out of ether

From chaos to context

Always ticking, ticking next

To timelag and origin.

Time on. Time in.

Preparing for contact

Seasons on a single track.

Now, now the meeting on the plane—

Time for loss and time for gain. 

What time is it? What time is it?                                                                           

When do time and no time meet?

 Then. Now. And ever. You shall neither rise nor sink                                        

In time. Time is only what you think.                                                   

Then. Now. And ever. Tick on. Tick in.