Clocks back

Only silence
in the early hour
of grey October.
Just the guiding ticks

of unseen clocks
disturb the dawn.
Waiting to greet the
guardian who’ll gently

cease their beat.
One hour of rest
in all the year
as gentle time

adjusts her state,
and dutifully waits
to compensate.
Imagine what great deeds

might be achieved
in this, the absent hour?
What miracles might occur
if folk would stop

and contemplate.
And all too soon
the virtual hour is past.
And who’s to judge

if we employed it well,
and used its spell
to good effect?
For now the clocks,

awakened
tick again.
Accompanying Earth’s
rhythmic pulse

to test our spirits
without fear,
and meet the darker half
of the year.

28th X 2007 (re-worked 17th XI 2024)

Foot prints

We met again for the first time
after fourteen years, we’d calculated.
Our parents gone,
she came to the cradle of humanity
to restart our nascent journey.
 
And memories arrived on the flood,
as a Serengeti dry riverbed
fills in minutes
after long anticipated rains,
 
rejuvenating the germ and spirit of life
across the plains,
attending to nature’s shortcomings;
washing away old prejudice.
 
I was happy we ignored those things
that had separated us, instead
choosing to acknowledge
our shared heritage;
the joy and privilege
gifted to us.
 
And we both felt a warmth
to remember we
had a sibling still,
for there was always a niggle…
as a twin detects an absence
of the other.
 
Was it ever thus
for homo sapiens and his
forebears, whose footprints
are embedded in
ancient lava fields
not far from here?
 
For those social complexities,
developed and evolved over
three million years
and arriving at us,
make our fourteen
seem rather trivial.

(for Sian)
  
John H Davies
11^th VI 2024
Serengeti