How You See It

How strange, time.
It wends
And bends
Is a fabric
That distorts
On paper
And experimented with
In warp terms
Of quantum mechanics.

In the practicality
Of substance
Time is nothing but
Ticks of a clock
Digital numbers
Glowing on a screen
Precisely calibrated
To mark the passing
Of events
Sliced into
Observable sequence.

But to the lover
How different is time!

Time is measured
In parcels of pain
Occasioned by
Hours since
The last kiss
Last embrace
Last union
Of bodies and souls
The last time
One iris
Gazed into
Another iris.

The Astrophysicist
Understands time
As the fragmentation
Of length in travel
To the most remote
Spheres
Of the universe.

But to the lover
Time
Is corpuscles
In the stream
Of desire.

The scientist and lover
Agree
In one respect:

To both
Time is
The delay between
The beginning and end
The origin and the target
The loam and the harvest
The pain and joy
Of what was
And what is hoped will be
Again.

Time…
What the scientist
Holds
And the lover
Beholds.

The discipline of substance
And the substance of discipline.

How you see it
Determines which you are.