Most would just use a calendar,
measuring time as the years pass, one by one.
But I feel like my life has flown by
in only hours.
The first hour I remember
my earliest, I’m laughing;
gasping through giggles.
Wild hair in my face,
the sun was shining through the window.
Endless evening hours
Montana summer, a sun refusing to set.
Barefoot, I run down the street
Mom whistled, called us home.
It was hours ago,
I was on horseback, nowhere to be but right there
under the big sky.
I can still smell the sweat as I brush the ol’ buckskin dry.
The hour spent learning the dance of gas and clutch,
dusty backroads,
only the cows could see my missteps.
In an hour, I became an adult.
Graduating highschool
new life, new world,
falling in love in less than an hour,
all in the same breath.
An hour of labor
an hour of up all night
an hour of not understanding how to do it all,
but loving every minute, all sixty.
Baby boy.
Soon repeating the hours,
Baby girl.
Wasn’t it just hours ago, I sent both to school
and sat for the first time
in a house to myself?
I took a nap for an hour.
When I woke, I found myself in school,
hours of study and tests and papers
doubts turned to satisfaction of all
the hours spent.
Only an hour ago, the clock struck twelve
new year, new decade,
the bars of our hopes set high.
And an hour later
we all watched them shatter.
We have laughed and cried about this for hours.
One hour ago, I swear it,
I had nothing to do but sit in the summer sun and watch my garden grow.
It took an hour to harvest
an hour to watch it all fall back to the earth.
In the last hour, I crawled from the sheets,
morning sun forgetting to shine.
My kids will soon ask,
Mom, when is dinner?
It’s in an hour,
please
no one
blink.
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