Fall Back the Clock
The glow behind the knoll is early now
flooding dusty rose over dead foliage
like blush on dry-skinned cheeks—
a mortician's best work with unsteady hands.
We're aging
like Eliot's worried women and their chronometers.
Today the supposed gift of another hour,
one the lobstermen resent for implied laziness,
idling at the launch as the sun charges
fast on federal waters
long after Trident has gone out to pee
or kill some mice.
She cannot tell Time yet.
It's seven o'clock body time,
she'd say with a melody
undeterred by my complaint
about rising from flannel sheets
while she shook cereal in boxes,
reminding me I should be off book by now.
So I am.
I memorized it all
as Spear Carrier #4 would
in some regional rep—
I tread the boards late at night in shadow,
repeating my negligible role
in this leftover life.
This extra hour I was given to miss her
without it counting towards
the allotted time before grief is meant to burn clean.
I am falling back
and there is still plenty of smoke floating
such that I cannot make out clock time yet.
Hannah Grady is a writer and oyster farmer based out of Midcoast Maine. She lives alone in a cottage by a salt river with a three-legged dog named Trident Pearl.