Years in Years

Years within Years

I have never been friends with the clock

It taunts me every day

With it's moving face and useless hands

Which move on slowly in the day

And fast when I relax

It haunts me with the constant ticking

A sound that goes when I no longer hear

It paces on towards that day - ever a reminder

And shakes my soul.

I don't have time... and yet I measure my life by it

I'll work around 76,800 hours of my life

And sleep for a third of it

A child for a fraction of it, and adult the rest.

If I am lucky,

I will have 80 summers

I'll have slept for 26 years

And if I retire at 65 - if that's still the age

I'll have worked a 'full-time' job for 40 years.

And school and part time jobs for 16.

That's more years of statistics than a lifespan.

Yet in this I'll have been lucky.

For I'll have 15 years of freedom - that's not what that word means

And I'll be at the end of time

Wondering how I fit so many years

Within my own years.