1930's New Haven Westinghouse clock

1930's New Haven Westinghouse clock

From mantle-top to unforgiving brick
and down the dust-thick basement steps it sunk
like bone, fossilized beneath a stack
of Reader’s Digest
                              deep in the house’s
                                                             strata.
With feline curves the whisker second hand
arches its back to scrape the foggy glass,
warped by what it counts.
                                          The oak-wood stand
is coated yellow with years.
                                           The door in the back
ajar, rust-red gears are interlocked
in arthritic prayer, and footsteps up above
are all that mark the rhythmic tock and tick
of time:
             another thing, like me,
                                                 that breaks itself.

 
- published in 21st Century Flow