Star Time

We are three,
fragile with distance
burning time and losing sleep.
The world is big
and we’ve lost summer in it.
A mother with a dying son,
a lonely middle age man,
and a dreamer who
skitters backward among stones
from the monsters in her mind.

Cynthia Jones

What shaper of deathless
stones invented time sleek,
linear and gleaming reaching
upward to the endless stars?
And how did they teach the obelisk
to speak, surrendering secrets,
telling time? Who gave time

a face, mechanical and cold,
with unfaltering hands to hold
these children of the stars
in dreamless sleep
amid the gears and exhaust,
the deathless production
lines moving relentlessly

to the rhythm of a clock
beating out time.