"Timely Ghazal" by Alison Stone

Timely Ghazal
Alison Stone

Things you can’t control – love, weather, grace, time.
My favorite cliché is race against time.
Like an undertow, her phone sucks my teen
daughter into YouTube, Snapchat, FaceTime.
Our elm’s branches brought the power lines down.
In darkness, distortion of sound, space, time.
She let her hair go silver, wears her lined
face without shame. Her motto -- Embrace time.
Death is a salesman, shoes worn from peddling
silence, blank brochures, a briefcase of time.
My mother’s cancer isn’t novel, nor
is yours. Our worst griefs commonplace as time.
In the high-tech future, will metal eggs
grow children, computer code replace time?
Focused on Eternity, poets tend
to lateness, sloppy with lowercase time.
Miss Havisham’s stopped clocks. White Rabbit’s watch.
Welles’ machine. Classics, a showcase for time.
Not all wounds heal. Not Columbine, Sandy
Hook. Not Parkland. Some stains won’t erase. Time
to do nothing, the senators agree.
Bowie’s cranked-up voice claims, You can’t trace time.
In a dream I float between stones and stars.
Wake with wisps of another name, place, time.