Elasticity of Time

Study in Time by David Challoner

I sit to write:

words will not come,

the clock ticks on,

my mind is numb.

I stand to speak:

the questions flow,

I'm out of time

before I know.

I lie awake,

the dawn's light grey.

My mind roams wild,

I long for day.

I meet a friend

close to my heart,

the minutes race,

it's time to part!

What is this Time

that rules our lives,

one moment gives,

the next deprives?

How strange it seems; 

a day that flies

in mem'ry can

light years comprise.

©Janet Henderson June 2015

The inspiration for this poem came from Virginia Woolf writing about the Elasticity of Time.

‘It's extraordinary to think how humans experience time: time, unfortunately, though it makes animals and vegetables bloom and fade with amazing punctuality, has no such simple effect upon the mind of man. The mind of man, moreover, works with equal strangeness upon the body of time. An hour, once it lodges in the queer element of the human spirit, may be stretched to fifty or a hundred times its clock length; on the other hand, an hour may be accurately represented on the timepiece of the mind by one second. Life piles up so fast that I have no time to write out the equally fast rising mound of reflections. I want to appear a success even to myself. Yet I don’t get to the bottom of it. It’s having no children, living away from friends, failing to write well, spending too much on food, growing old. I think too much of whys and wherefores; too much of myself. I don’t like time to flap round me. Well then, work. I wonder why time is always allowed to harry one.’ Orlando, A Biography, Virginia Woolf, October 1928