POEM TITLE
Field Mice & Lobsters
POEM
Field Mice & Lobsters
We don’t hold time.
We don’t spend it, use it
or abuse it. Time has us.
It is the blackness on sea.
We feel time going slow or fast,
depending on how we are feeling
or what we think we need to do—
the Lobster pot boils endlessly.
The infinite, continual progress of existence and events from the past, in the present and into
the future has little to do with our wants or aspirations for life, has little to do
with how we feel about Lobster, or the sea;
about the unwavering going forward
of seconds,
minutes,
hours.
Time has us. It spends us like
a young child with their first allowance.
It continually passes with no regard for us.
It rolls as the waves upon the blackened waters.
“It clutches us in its mouth like an owl clutches a field mouse. “
It catches us in a lobster pot like the fishermen sailing the seas.
It holds us hostage and devours our lives as quickly as that owl seeks to eat the mouse for lunch;
as quickly as the lobster pot boils its occupants.
We struggle for release, like
the lobster and the mouse
shaking, shivering—skewing our bodies and thoughts,
trying to get free of time’s
relentless pursuit-
Yet, we are no more going anywhere
than that lobster slowly sweating its life away,
like the field mouse who once caught,
is a goner—both disposed of with open gusto,
consumed
in a flash
of appetite and sustenance.