What Time is it in Wal-Mart? - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

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What Time is it in Wal-Mart?

 

 

                                                 And call to children in the yard

                                                 “What century is it outside?”

 

-Pasternak, “About These Poems”

 

 

My daughter gave me a nifty Apple watch

But years have passed; it mostly spends its time

On the charger, dreaming of happier hours

When minutes joyfully leaped over each other

 

I found my dusty Timex in a dusty drawer

$8.00 at Wal-Mart a long time ago

          (the watch, not the drawer)

I fitted it with a new battery (I can do stuff)

Its sweep hand leaps over its painted dial

 

I passed some little children; one of them hissed

“What is that curious thing on that old man’s wrist?”