2025 Yahtzee Roll #3: Fill #2

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

Title: An Assay on Time
Prompt: Efficient
No. of Lines: 28
Rating: Gen
Poetic form: carol stanza
Summary: an assay (kind of a brainstorming poem) about the nature of time

Time flies like an arrow
Fruit flies like a rotten plum in harrow

Efficiently the clocks
Make time by multiplying nicks and knocks,
Dispensing ticks and tocks.
Time flies like an arrow!

For play, for bed, for tea,
For story and for losing merrily
Forgotten history
Fruit flies like a rotten plum in harrow!

The present is a gift.
Fine sands in the hourglass spend and shift
set best-laid plans adrift.
Time flies like an arrow!

Pleas to self: don’t forget!
But we do. We always do. And regret
is doing time unmet.
Fruit flies like a rotten plum in harrow!

there’s stitching and saving
there’s killing, wasting, waiting, and craving
carving and engraving
Time flies like an arrow!

How much more have we got?
But if it’s just an illusion, ought
we to care if we’re caught?
Fruit flies like a rotten plum in harrow!

Time flies like an arrow!
Fruit flies like a rotten plum in harrow!

Comments

[smallhobbit]

A particularly effective poem: 'Pleas to self: don't forget!' reminded me of an email I've been meaning to send for days, so I stopped mid-poem, sent the email (it was very short), and returned to the poem. It definitely captures the balance in life between getting things done and not worrying about them.

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

Thank you! Yes, I still have a bit of ego and say 'oh, I'll remember X' but more often than not, I don't remember X for a long time (even nice things, things I ought to remember, like look up the next book in the series you like) and so I'm writing stuff down more these days. It just flies out of my head.