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# Keeping Time
- URL: https://www.andyposner.org/keeping-time/
- Published: 2024-02-04T20:06:26.000Z
- Updated: 2026-07-21T01:16:33.000Z
- Description: The alarm goes off at 4. I will myself to my feet, not for a grand mission, but to catch a flight. In the predawn darkness, driving the 101 to the 405, I recite Clifton, Keats, & Limón
- Author: Andy
- Tags: Be The Change, poetry, #Migrated-1784090317409, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2026-07-15 04:39

1

The alarm goes off at 4\. I will myself to my  
feet, not for a grand mission, but to catch

a flight. In the predawn darkness, driving the  
101 to the 405, I recite Clifton, Keats, & Limón

to ward off sleep & *all that has tried to kill me*  
[*& has failed*](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50974/wont-you-celebrate-with-me?ref=andyposner.org). For now, at least, the stakes are

low—the traffic is light; I arrive early, half-hoping  
the trip is canceled so I can crawl back to bed.

Back home my mother-in-law has had an aneurysm,  
she is in a hospital full of people for whom the music

that never stops may, any moment, stop ringing in their  
ears. I shut off the radio & tap my foot to the silence.

2

Once, struggling with some verse like a gardener  
pulling at weeds, I made a deal with myself:

produce one poem that can reverberate through  
history, harmonizing with the light of the ever-

expanding expanse of space, & I’ll put down  
my pen, retire to a life of leisure, television,

good food slowly eaten. But it was a lie. Desire  
does not die before the body—even prophets &

monks want, badly, to be heard, vows of silence  
notwithstanding. What chance do poets have

to extinguish the mind’s longing to outlive itself?  
If I’m lucky the world will come to my deathbed,

shushing the robins & hyenas. If I’m lucky the world  
will hear me, & my last words will keep time.