This thing all things devours;

Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;

Gnaws iron, bites steel;

Grinds hard stones to meal;

Slays king, ruins town,

And beats mountain down.

-J.R.R. Tolkien

 

 

 

 

He is the bane of our world and the enemy

to our very souls

Murderous

Envious of life

Yet

It is an enemy we cannot fight

We cannot slay

We cannot win.

 

How many times have we wished to have

one more goodbye

one more embrace

one more chance

Yet

It is an enemy we cannot fight

We cannot slay

We cannot win.

 

Time is the curse of which I speak

That ancient comrade of death

Time has never been alive

and so he must steal our breath

 

He steals our precious moments

They last only for so long

He steals our mothers and fathers

and our hearts cry a vengeful song

 

Were I allowed to change one thing

in our restlessly working world

It would be for us to deny the human

part of us

And defeat time at his own game

 

We would

Call our mothers

Call our fathers

Offer words of love

Forgive those who have wronged us

And find some way to rise above

 

Because

In the end we all succumb

to time’s dusty outreaching hand

In the end we all become

one in the way of sand

 

-A.C.

 

 

 

(footnote: prefacing poem taken from “Lord of the Rings” and found on http://www.cliffsnotes.com/cliffsnotes/literature/what-are-the-riddles-that-gollum-asked-bilbo-in-the-hobbit)

(picture from http://www.wordcounter.net/blog/2014/01/finding-time-to-write/)