by Michael Eden Reynolds

When time at first began to slip there was,
among the extra-sensitive, the sense
an extra beat sustained each act.
Where some relaxed, stretched, basked,
others cramped as if their footing spanned
a micron-width of bottomless crevasse.

By month-end it was the common talk: the lazy
second hand, the way July (so fair) had stretched
so long this year, the way even the water’d slowed
out of the taps—she laughed, It took so long to run the bath
I thought I’d have to put the kids to bed without.
At last I toweled them off, my watch read half of five!
I sent them out to play in their pajamas.

A national emergency was called on August first.
A mathematician live on CNN evoking Zeno
spoke about the cardinality of fractions in a second.
A government initiative on clocks was launched: ignore
the sun, set forward fifteen minutes every hour, curtains
drawn by eight, but by midweek you couldn’t find
two clocks alike in town. The curfew was abandoned.

Thing is, the majority are lost to this sprung time.
Kids of course do well, and many of the formerly demented.
It’s certain the economy will crash,
when is difficult to pin. A handful weave between the slack
double-time intent to squirrel away the savings—
twelve bells, it’s noon or midnight somewhere.

I take a walk to clear my head.
Halfway back I feel myself:
it hinges from your point of reference,
where I stand, things go on as ever.

Michael Eden Reynolds lives in Whitehorse, Yukon, with his wife Jenny and their two children. His poems have won the Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize and the John Haines Award for Poetry. He was a finalist for the CBC Literary Awards in 2005 and The Malahat Review Long Poem Contest in 2007. A poem published in PRISM in 2007 was selected for inclusion in The Best of Canadian Poetry in English 2008 (Tightrope Books). Michael’s first book, Slant Room, will be published by Porcupine’s Quill this fall.