As we grow older, days move over
to give their space to weeks. Seven
are squeezed as four, and no wonder
in midlife, find the months in sudden
awareness now; they fly by faster!
As age increases, time can hasten
as twelve become but four! Then
the seasons flow into each other—
too fast. Watch a Springtime quicken
and melt into the heat of Summer
which, scarcely here, is elbowed, taken
as golding leaves Fall into Winter.
There, all of concrete Time is One,
Eternal, when this Life is done.
Author notes
A sortasonnet, fourteen lines, mangled form. It is an edited prewrite, but my computer does not display ID-numbers. Young people who have not yet experienced accelerating time will not get this. Octagenarians will nod wisely--or nod off....
A contest entry
- A contest for Sonnets on the change of seasons ONLY by ecrivain01.
450 points, ended October 27, 2007, 11 entries
Bronze trophy winner
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
Please tell me what you think
Comments
1 - 12 of 12
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This is so true. And a bit scary too. I very much like this, especially the third stanza.
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Stanza 3 especially speaks to the conflating time-sense of age and seasons. The lines flow into themselves, compressing rhythm and syntax; words shift meaning almost before we have finished reading them; rhymes hover on the edge of becoming perfect, then shift slightly to become something else, less than perfect, more fulfilling.
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Micol, Thank you so much! I really appreciated your comment on Mangled Math of Life, where perceptions get skewed by age. Surprised it had done so well, considering how quickly it was written. Iambic meter of course is easy. Later I attempted to write the same content with trochaic meter just for fun to see if it could be done, (I assumed it could because I'd used trochaic before.) It was a dismal failure.
It is obvious when I have worked hard at a poem. It feels laboured, has wooden feet and is discarded. Not this.
This one had written itself. And you caught the special quality in it, that I thought to be so extraordinary! It was so nice to know, your perceptive description of its reading brought a big smile, for it caught the feeling so exactly!
Please let me tell you something strange. Muse, who has been with me for seven decades since my first verses, deserves the credit, not I. Really. (My muse thanks you too!) I said it wrote itself. A truly strange feeling when that happens--a kind of tuning in, a sense of wonder, almost disbelief as I watched my hands typing unexpected things. Not so much at first with the slower pace of change, for it fit the memory. Ordinary. Then came the acceleration! A shift of semantics until, the "golding leaves FALL into winter" (a verb/noun both at once!) and I, amazed at its facility, how it could so easily say two different things near-simultaneously to show a flash of change, and it just came. Muse at work!
It does sound so unlikely that no cognitive process had been involved, no pre-planning, no pre-write, and yet is how it came. And when it is all I have time for, that is all there is, and the rough draft is the final product.
Thank you again, Micol! It was so gratifying to know that the feeling of a collapse of Time into a single truth could be so clearly transmitted!
Terry
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I've felt the inspiration/inclusion of Muse often enough to recognize it as amazing. Not anything one can force; but when the poem does write itself, what an experience! The first time it happened, I felt like my world was the dream for the week it took to write the piece; then when i placed the final period, that sense vanished, my world jarred back as reality, and I could do nothing to change the poem for almost 15 years (then I found an error of fact that had to be fixed).
Thanks for the extensive response...and for the pleasure of your poem.
Michael
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I am still young, but as my 30th birthday approaches, I wonder where my 20's went! I love the form of this poem. The progression of the hours of the day, the days of the week, and the months of the year being reduced to four to reinforce the four seasons is great! Good luck in the contest!
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thanks lilith
There is a theory that it has someting to do with the mathemetics of length of life. To a child of 4, one year is 1/4 of its life, but one day is only 1/1460th. At age 30 a day would be 1/10950th--no wonder the days flip by, but try age 60, 1/21600th went by before we could read it! Try a week, divide it by 7: 1/3128 of the person's lifetime... Pfft!
Kind of ridiculous? About the idea, no in general; it's the particulars that make it silly, and yet for me at 77 the summer was gone almost before it got here. I can remember longer weeks as a bored kid. I'll be in real trouble when Fal-inter follows Spr-ummer!
Thank you for these speculations!
Terry
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Yes ...
time does work that way. Evidently it has to do with a chemical reaction in our brains as we grow older. I've read about it many times over the years, and I've certainly noticed that time seems to fly by now, whereas when I was young, it drug most of the time.
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chemical reaction--?
Well, it would explain it, certainly. A chemical byproduct of aging metabolism? Hmmm, I wonder if it has a name.
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Strange phenomenon--faster and faster to achieve less and less until in our nineties, as time whirls away, we sit and spin our wheels, a study in negative speed?
So saying, I have a couple of hours of solid work yet to do before I greet my pillow.
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Ho Terry,
Love the form of this one. Mangled sonnet you say?
The idea of time accelerating is beautifully illustrated in your words. Well done! I especially like the images of the seasons in the third stanza and how they interact with each other.
(And you don't have to be in your 8th decade to see the speeding up of time. Every year I go to the dinner honouring the retirees in my Board they seem to look a little younger to me . . . hmmmmm.)
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Et tu basilisk? Thank you! I thought the only way to show acceleration (rather than tell) was to have the events happening closer and closer together, which is in fact what happens.
Funny, I had noticed the youth of retirees too. Just proves ages are inversely proportional in such skewed views!
And beginning teachers! Don't ask!
Terry
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it flies by quickly enough at the appoach of sixty--and with what blinding speed did youth flow away--how do we get them to understand that they must cherish each word & moment? How many poets have tried? and all have failed just as we have done, blinded by our ambitions we toss time away for their sake, and find ourselves worn and tired by our exertion, and Time just as it ever does, flies by, unconcerned.
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Lute, you are SO right!
My "kids" are over fifty now, would agree with you-- I grew aware of it in my forties, and truly, it accelerates. Weeks fly by like days now, especially when they are filled to the brim like mine. I don't wonder where our youth went.
"Gather ye Rosebuds while ye may" has many meanings, this being one. Appreciate, take note, be thankful for family and friends, the beauty of sunrise and sunset, fragrance of freshness, sound of small birds... You fill in the gaps.
One thought: Be bored? Really really bored...?
Wouldn't time drag then?
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