Watches are strange.
Little chains we don around our wrists.
Faces for each style style,
for each time of day.

Time of day,
that’s what a watch does,
tells you the time of day.

Why don’t birds wear watches?
Because birds have those hollow little bird wrists,
that couldn’t support a chain if they tried?

No. I don’t think that’s why.
Because birds are the rule,
not the exception
to the wild animal kingdom we live in,
to the push and the pull of nature and clay and claw and fang.

My watch can’t time a sunrise or a sunset or the sun.
Because the sun is always rising somewhere,
always setting elsewhere,
always chasing it’s own tail.

Birds don’t wear watches
because our time is not there time.
There are no days or months or years
to that sparrow or that starling or that blue jay.

I’m sorry human race,
the world literally, and simply
does not revolve around you.
No one else needs this definite organization.

These calculators of just how much time
we’ve wasted on dark rooms and blue screen,
or how much time has passed
since you saw What’s-Her-Face,
or Whose-That-Guy.

We care too much.
Birds are pushed out of their nest,
once mommy doesn’t want to remember their birthday.
None of this unnecessary necessary connection.
No obligation to remember curfew is at 11:30,
or that the 12;15 bell isn’t the last of the day.

Birds don’t keep a countdown
on their hollow little bird wrists,
they don’t remind themselves
of an inescapable mortality.

Birds wouldn’t fly
if they knew how the time flies
when you’re having fun,
or how sometimes you can close your eyes to the morning sun
for just a minute and all of the sudden its noon.

All of the sudden you’re a staircase,
trodden on one-too-many times,
bent in the wrong places,
creaky from scuffs left by people in a hurry.
People running running running out of time,

You’ve got dents from people who took too much time,
the lazy, the lovers, the chatty ones.
But hey you can be all bent out of shape,
because you’ve got that watch,
and you know
its only a few more days
or hours
or minutes
you’ll have to bend like that.

Good thing that watch is an heirloom.
The time isn’t wasted on it yet,
its recyclable.
Because every hour, every minute, every day
that we live is just a day.

We named it that.
We let it be part of us
and what we are
and how we do it all, yet birds.
Yes those same birds,
who wear no watches on their hollow little bird wrists,
their lives are their forever,

There are no heirloom watches
for those who do not have a past
to be reminded of,
or a memory to remember that past with.

Memory.
There’s a membrane inside this memory
that contorts and twists and writhes
in pain because it knows.

Memories are lost.
It is the most doomed of them all.
This fiber of being is no longer being
when you cease to be as you are
what you are right now.

And if you think that when you die
someone will come along,
and pull these fibers
like feathers from your head
you’re wrong.

That is why birds
don’t wear watches.

Because loss and losing and knowing,
we are going to lose it all,
no matter how many bets you make,
or prayers you say,
or how many times you try to make everyone listen
just so you’re remembered,
are why we do wear watches.

To remind us that time is present.
It is now.
It is as I write and you read.
As I breathe and you speak.
As I live and someone dies.

I know they did.
Because I have a watch on my wrist,
and it’s telling me
I’ve got all the time in the world,
yet I know its lying.
Because I’m not a bird.