Last Night

Last night I saw you in my dream
wrenching the hands off the clocks
Vicki Feaver  White Tulips

There you were in the dark
in a kind of frenzy, barefoot
in the kitchen and it could have been
midnight or four am, it was hard to tell,
you had all the clocks off the walls
off the mantelpiece off the sideboard,
had smashed their glass like dinner plates,
now getting hold of the hands,
wrenching them, prising them, pulling them off.
Some came easily - the kitchen wall clock
its hands like plastic chopsticks now
littering the red lino in the moonlight,
but the little ticking carriage clock
would not yield its hands to you
so now you had seized up a pair
of blue handled pliers and were
gripping the tiny spidery things,
twisting and yanking them off
and there was no time now.

Even the computer with its
secret digital clock in the corner
had been smashed to the floor.
You were all fury and determination
awake or sleepwalking,
I couldn't be sure as I stood
at the window staring in
through the uncurtained glass, aghast.
What now? Time is gone
but the moonlight moves
across the kitchen floor
inexorably, marking the passing
of minutes as surely as clock hands,
so will you come outside
and try to wrench it out of the sky?
What of the sun which in a few hours
will be climbing the sky in tiny increments,
minutes, seconds?