Being as we are always slightly late
for the present, we are inclined
to be interested in the distant past
but in occasional sobriety,
we know the future is unknowable.

No point in trying to turn the clock
back, for what we seek in the past
is no longer there or may well be
again in a future without us,
our stories and mistakes repeated.

Not merely an antique, the hour-glass
reminds us in grains of falling sand
that everything is finite
and time like water slips through every hand.