‘The memory of what you were
is beginning to fade,’
the man on the radio said,
his voice fading
and crescendoing
with a turn of the dial
or a wave of the hand.
‘Time moves around quick,
that’s what I find,’
said the man on the radio.
But at mid-day it is so slow.
I imagine him sitting down
to ponder on things from the past
that fall and rise and float.
At five o’clock,
he’ll eat a meal at last,
listen to the radio or read
a newspaper or a paperback,
and time speeds up again,
rattling wheels
on its demented track.
Kim M. Russell, 11th April 2023
Image by Haydn Golden on Unsplash
On the eleventh day of NaPoWriMo, the (optional) prompt challenges us to play around with the idea of overheard language, taking as a starting point something overheard that made us laugh, or something someone told us once that struck us as funny.
Our inspiration is Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem ‘One Boy Told Me’.
I wrote about something sad I heard on Short Cuts with Josie Long on BBC Sounds.
writing in north norfolk 
Feel better soon, Kim!💜 Love this image of time hurtling into oblivion: “and time speeds up again, / rattling wheels / on its demented track.”
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Thank you Romana.
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This really stuck a chord with me. A great bit of writing.
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Wonderful fluidity, Kim. Thanks.
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Cheers Ron!
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Hope you’re feeling better Kim.
The way you’ve juxtaposed the time of the day with the movement of time and also woven the mundane-vulnerability of human in this piece is wonderful. A great piece.
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Thank you Arti. Still suffering but thankfully able to read and comment.
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These words made me go back and forth and around and through Time 🙂
“to ponder on things from the past
that fall and rise and float”
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I’m so glad my poem had an effect on you. I hope it’s positive.
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I’m fascinated by how we perceive time….and its influence on how and what we remember …our stories
Thank you for writing! Positive! Positive 😃
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Thank you for reading and commenting!
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