Time Piece

His eye stares out at me, enlarged beyond reasonable measure,
behind the magnifying lens. Through optical intervention
he peers, analysing minute mechanisms — his stock-in-trade. 

A clock is energy stored, human muscle or gravity, or both, 
harnessed and through an intricacy of cog, wheel, spring, 
balance and counter-balance, channelled and released, 

in careful degree, to make the hands turn, the seconds move the hour, 
the half and the quarter — to chime, to ring.
Each second moves its way inexorably towards the minute, 
the minute to the hour — a sum of twenty-four — to make the day, 
to begin anew. Such delicacy, such patience: to cast the bronze,
to tap the screw, to file the heads, to assemble each, into this 

ticking, tocking, almost-alive mechanism. What is its measure?
What did he count? The difference between then and now?
Did he define the thing itself or his perception of it? 

He aligned his clocks to the moon and sun; to the tides and stars — 
these sidereal chronometers were his proudest works. Years in the 
making, from scratch, each piece of time a specific cast, 

faces engraved and etched, as if this star system were not 
enough, so reaching out, he found a different measure.
Like catching time from further away, knowing its source 

its metricity, he captured a bigger picture, like Harrison, 
seeing time as a beautiful essence, an element, unknowable. 
Each cog and spring bringing him closer to the truth. 

Giles H. Sutherland