Making Good Time

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

A neighbour in the road where I lived as a child was always helping others. Once, I fell over, and cut my knee badly. Immediately, she took me inside, wiped it clean, and applied a plaster because she knew my mother would not be at home, having met her while out shopping. I thanked her for making the time to be my Good Samaritan, which parable from the New Testament I had heard only days before at Sunday School. (It would be a few years later before I gave up on religion.) She simply shrugged and commented, “Better to make time and have something to show for it than not.” I have never forgotten those words even though some 60+ years have passed since that day.

“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.” 

 - Omar Khayyám

“Time is a created thing. To say 'I don't have time,' is like saying, 'I don't want to.” 

- Lao Tzu

MAKING GOOD TIME

Were life a clock face and we its hands,

measuring out time as in the footsteps of ghosts,

at any second in any hour, find someone

standing up to be counted, a principle at stake

that warrants neither any compromise

or convenient slip of memory into some pit

of consciousness whose only purpose

to stir pangs of guilt now and then, though nothing

to write home about, better archived

Were life a clock face and we its hands,

measuring out time as a grocer might well weigh

out a shopper’s vegetables for payment

over a crowded counter, queue growing longer,

find someone standing up to be counted

making their voice heard over the general hubbub

protesting about an aggressive queue jumper

whom no one cares to remark upon aloud for fear

of any thought police listening in

Were life a clock face and we its hands.

measuring out time as a student of human nature

might well mark how many times in a day

bear witness to common courtesy, an awareness

of another person’s disability, and the need

to lend a helping hand or surrender a seat on a bus

or train, go out of their way in no time at all

for making a difference, transforming a mountain

into a molehill for someone, anyone

Were life a clock face, and we its hands, see us fly

past-present-future in the blink of an all-seeing eye

Copyright R. N. Taber 2009