The Masque of
Time
Every Moment is New Year's
Somewhere exotic, wherever you're not,
Someplace cold if your day is hot,
A person, a tribe, a religion or nation
Is celebrating a day of special occasion:
A mark on a calendar,
Gregorian or otherwise,
A mere set of hours
Beginning at sunrise –
or ending there –
or waiting there
For newer assignment,
An update of time of greater consignment.
So what care have others for this New Year's Day
When theirs is different, passed, or months away?
These days on a calendar, squares of
designation,
Become cells of confinement and unthinking resignation
To the masque of time that deceives with festivities,
Perpetuating limitation to only special proclivities.
Into these cells we squeeze the point of living,
Forgetting that time is forever giving.
Are twenty-four hours all that we dare
When time itself is the lion's share?
But there is an unmasking,
A bewitching hour,
When infinity exposes full splendor of power.
It comes in conversation, in joy and even grief
When time escapes cells and becomes its own thief.
There, the unwitting truth, when time seems to fly,
Not when we kill time but allow vigils to die.
We gain time by losing it,
By removing its mask,
By making life the celebration,
Not set days of task.
Every second, minute, hour, month, year:
A new dawning for change, freedom, and cheer.
– Mary Jo Magar –