Uh-Oh, Poetry: The Mill

Watch out, guys; sometimes there's poetry. There doesn't seem to be any way to stop it.

 

 

The Mill

 

The little seconds whir

The minutes tick, tick by

Then it strikes the hour

Once, twice, a dozen times

A dozen times again

With a heave, another day turns over

Whirring whispers tick, tick, tick

Strike, heave; sunrise once more

 

The little gears spin so the big wheels can turn

Heave, heave, days become a week

Rollercoaster creaking up to Wednesday’s apex

Coasting down to Friday’s big plunge

Living for the weekend

Creak, plunge; TGIF

Again and again and again

 

A month slots neatly into place

Beholden to the seasons

The very turning of the world

Their holidays strung like jewels along the line

All so very seasonal

The rituals walking you through your paces

Slot, slot, slot, turn; a season gone

Season’s greetings, everyone

 

A year thuds into line, and it’s an assembly line

It’s a mill, processing your life

The years come in ten-piece sets

Remember your early years fondly

For soon there will be more of them

Thud - once more, twice more, thrice more

Four more times, years stacked high and bundled

 

You grow older, and the early years include your thirties

Your forties, your fifties, any time when you didn’t ache

When you had your own joints

Your own teeth

Your world shrinks in size

The bed, the chair, the window

And in it there is only room for

Whirring seconds

Ticking minutes

And decades, the box sets of your life remembered

 

What was the grist, what was the chaff

Churned in that

whirring

ticking

striking

heaving

creaking

plunging

slotting

turning

thudding

mill?