After two desperate months of masked
bedside vigil, watching daylight descend
to dark, inhaling bowls of Cheerios and
battling insomnia at home, network tv
commercial breaks marking time until
visiting hours at Columbia Memorial
resume, I schedule the appointment
at Sutton Clock on impulse.
The bare faced black oak 8-day Mission
clock sat for years on our mantle.
Stately, still and quiet, gonging only
when jostled during sporadic dusting.
Brass hinges and gilt Arabic numerals
lonely ornamentation on the sturdy
no nonsense turn of the century time piece.
I can’t remember from which downsizing
we inherited it, or if it worked at the time.
Perhaps I am hoping to jump start
time, to apply defibrillator paddles
to this stalled existence or float
free of the quicksand limbo, past
those long weeks between Thanksgiving
and MLK Day when everything
was suspended in non-animation.
I carry the clock to the shop on 82nd,
down a flight of stone stairs where the locked
door warns “by appointment only”.
A small lithe man, cottony puffs of hair
framing his face, ushers me into
the heart of the warren. Walls and floors
tick and tock. Without even a glance
at the clock he asks how long it has been
since it ran and I think he is talking
about my own heart beating.
Naugatuck Review, Issue 30- Summer/Fall 2023
Elise Chadwick 