I

The filigreed watch case clicks open and inside
I find time’s intimate machinery:
the interlocking wheels’ circumference,
the pintoothed sprockets that still coincide,
even though the little self-important melody
that marked the subdivisions of the hour
is broken now, and mute.
                                           Desolate of consequence,
the pocket watch’s innards look like our
old diagrams of the Ptolemaic heavens
with epicyclical and sweet-greased spheres
—except that Made in U.S.A. appears
etched on a satiny spring,
                                           and George Evans
& Son, New York, glints up from another.

2

A second hand still whiskers the watch’s face
and staggers when I shake it in my fist.

The dark dials mutter like two summer bees
imprisoned in petals, and I feel them beat

—the ratchet of a rope let down into a well,
breathless and staccato and discrete—

each instant demarcated by a little click
that falters and then halts until it’s shook.

The watch is dove and pearl and velveteen
behind the dour digits of its face,

like hand-embroidered textiles or the stuffs
William Morris designed: vine-tangled arabesques

emblematic of luxuriance and rich
tissues drawn from some profounder life.

I twist the stem and listen for the tick
till a tiny, startled, hurrying succession

of twig-snapped seconds comes tiptapping out.
Each soft click is a comfort to my touch.