Dave Bonta's "Time keeper" is a tiny poem that sets two things against each other: church and a clock. The opening lines say church "can cloy," meaning it can feel sickly sweet, too much. A clock, though, never does. It just keeps counting, plain and unsentimental.
From there the speaker turns to prayer, but a stripped-down kind. They don't ask for comfort or salvation. They pray "to be true now," which puts the weight on the present moment, the one thing a clock actually measures. The speaker seems to want honesty more than ritual.
The last two lines are harder to pin down. "Give them some toy" could suggest that others can have their trinkets or comforting distractions, perhaps the trappings of religion, though the poem doesn't say. "My aim is thin" might mean the speaker's goal is narrow, or that their confidence is slight. Either way, the mood is quiet, wry, and a little austere, with a speaker who prefers something bare and exact to something sugary.