NEW DAYS

New days never have hangovers,
Never stilted by the days before.
The bridge of the night self-destructs
Rebuilds in advance of less and more
Of sunlight and shadows and path
Days and ways to explore
Never designed or imagined
By man alone, who measures store.
 
Today was a new day yesterday
Tomorrow the same for now,
But tomorrows never follow the rule
The stars don’t follow the plough.
And planning is like skating on ice
Like Pickwick and his merry band
Still Dickens gave him a dunking
And took him back to strong punch land.
 
Future is an imperfect tense
Past an unqualified guide of time
Present never lingers to say hello
Eternity lost in sand and lime.
New spuds count; they’re seasonal,
As new born lambs, spring tides,
Old means little and new means less
What’s gone and what is, hardly guides.
 
The pulse, crude metronome of the heart,
Seventy warnings per hour at hand,
Pointless, for we control nothing at all
As an egg-timer empty of sand.
Seconds and minutes, hours and days,
Months from winter till May,
The past a druid in decorous drag,
And time yet to come, gone away.
 
 
Don Boucicault was a noted Irishman who grounded the immortal words

“Men talk of killing time, while time quietly kills them”.