I’ve been obsessed with time lately. It sits watching me on the sofa in the languid heat of late summer and I wonder if it’s a friend or foe. Some people, especially the very elderly, eke out their time. They ration what is left, a bit today, a bit tomorrow, can’t waste what remains.

When you’re a child, you don’t even think about it. You’re buoyed along by it. It runs alongside you, plays endlessly with you. You can waste as much as you like. There’s always more. Then, as adults, it begins to knock bits off, to wear away the layers of your hard earned ego, to remind you that it’s just a loan. It is omnipresent, not you. It owns you. You do not have it at your disposal.

So, to answer that forever guilt provoking question: am I wasting time? I have decided to befriend time and wallow in its generosity before it finally engulfs me.

Because when I am not doing, I have more time to daydream, to wonder about the language of trees and wish I could decipher what they whisper to each other. I have more time to observe the people around me and try to understand what moves them, to forgive their follies and my own.

I have more time to stare at beautiful pictures, re-read poems and novels and still be moved by them, and know that art bypasses time.

I have more time to wonder what we are all doing here anyway and almost take pleasure in that mystery; more time to accept that I will not decipher the language of trees.

And to finish, here’s a little poem to thank the time travellers who have accompanied and are still with me on this journey:

Before I Forget

Before I forget to look at the blinding orange sun

Spreading its liquid halo behind the hills at dusk,

Crepuscular, alien, astonishing, belittling,

Beyond beautiful, beyond understanding,

Before I forget to look at the black cat

Slinking his way amongst the bushes,

the fledglings skimming low at dawn,

Before I walk away forever, I will remember this:

That this beauty, that this pain existed,

That this flimsy flesh, this broken loveliness

Was here on earth where I walked my time.

I will remember to look at the faces of friends,

Of my people, mi gente.

I will engrave the sweetness of one, the irony of another,

The anguished eyes of some, the helpless gentleness of others,

The hidden disappointment of most.

And I’ll take with me the diamond of your generous hearts,

Which maybe I didn’t deserve, but you gave me anyway.

Will it all fade, as light as gossamer, like the bougainvillea leaves

That fall paper thin, dried crumbling exuberance?

Will none of this matter when I no longer remember,

Or will it live on, strands threading through the universe,

Forever weaving and dancing in love and sorrow?