Clepsydra Poem by Gordon R Menzies

When time is measured in tears
whose unregulated, variable flow
mark the days as mine have done
who can name the century we're in?
uncountable tears in number, caught
so the volume can be weighed…
no answer there. This single tear,
released at the news of your passing
has more content than ten others,
this other, oh ungovernable passion, sought
to rise instead of falling. This one, it
fell upon my lips so that I tasted you,
you and the ocean and the salt air
of hidden beaches we loved upon
how many more have fallen as these
things have been recounted here, lost
and found again, as tears that have passed
and dried, still have salted the road run
so that the evidence of the wound remains
Oh Time, I have learned you can't be caught
Boethius' water clock was always a fiction
you are not a thing to be marked, but loved,
in the moment like an unquenchable woman
who will not remain beyond the loving, fleet
but oh, so given in the memories kept as
one might have believed he'd dreamed it all
if only he had slept instead of wept