when the days fray - poem

When the days fray,
and unravel into shapeless billowing things
that bloat and shrink as they will

when hours slip off their tracks,
un-cog a little,
run askew, gather minutes here,
discard them there

when clock-sharp boundaries,
previously marked with regimented beats,
now haze and fade

when actions, once habitual, ordered, fitting
into well-timed schedules,
now distend to vague expansions,
indefinitely infinite

when momentum is misplaced,
and focus loosened,
and you are drifting unremembered;

then anchor in, claw back that shape
but not until this fluctuating
fluid sense of time
imprints itself within you,


some echo of the infinite retained
as antidote
to future’s possible restraints.