TIMES — Summary

Mary F. C. PrattContemplative

Anytime you need an extra hour remember you can do it; no one will care.

Tell your boss, the teachers at your school, dentist–whomever–TIME CHANGE! It depends, as Einstein said, and hours are anyway makebelieve.

Even sunrise and sunset are most precarious, depending as they do on balance, the fine rim of universal turn.

For the days to be long, for time to pass slow, there must be markers of excitement, but

why would I want a comet to fall, anything but this graceful swing around the sun, this easy similarity of days?

How the Magical Thinking works: You notice that all is ordinary, and you’re thankful.

You’re asking for trouble; now things will fall apart. This is no mere superstition.

It doesn’t matter what you think. Troubles come whether you will or not. It’s how evolution happens: adaptation to stress, the tiny advantage in your genes.

I have stopped handing mine along; trouble is no longer my necesssity. But the times don’t listen; still the auspicious hours arrive, still they pass.

Listen, time passes. Listen? Touch it–the texture like tight wound wool, rows of pattern knit in color, yarn around the fingers, needle click.

Smell it pass– the coffee brewed again, yeast to bread to toast.

Can you taste it– time–flavored like wrinkled apples, new maple syrup, the cherry lollipops you coveted way back, when you were a kid.

Hindus have a Day of Paint. Children learn early to paint themselves first, with water color, before someone else does it in color that will remain till the skin wears away.

Though we might not suspect it, we are never groundless, here. We have all the dust of time solid beneath our feet.

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Mary F. C. Pratt's "Times" circles around one idea: time is both slippery and solid. The opening joke about asking for an extra hour treats clocks as make-believe, and even sunrise seems precarious. Yet the speaker prefers the ordinary, the "easy similarity of days," to anything as dramatic as a falling comet. Section 3 admits a small superstition: feeling thankful for calm seems to invite trouble. Section 4 answers that trouble comes regardless, and the speaker has stopped passing on her genes, while the hours keep arriving and passing anyway.

The poem then turns physical. Time has the texture of knitted wool, the smell of coffee and toast, the taste of apples, syrup and childhood lollipops. The mood is gentle, wry and quietly grateful. The short section on a Hindu festival of paint suggests that we are marked by experience early. The ending is steadying: we stand on "the dust of time," so we are never groundless.

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