Compass

Time's a rum thing, so pass the bottle.

If time could fix a sequence in the mind,
stand distant past down branching corridors,
we'd live in present and keep shut the doors,
memory's fetch, too tedious  - a bind.

But split the wood and lift the stone and here...
Open this rusty, rook-caw hinge in wall,
or hear a tinkled spoon. Who's come to call?
The very fridge is fringed with yesteryear*.

You lose the ground and come adrift in time,
like Billy Pilgrim in Tralfamadore,
chronosynclastic infandibula* -

just instances - it's not dementia -
though winter closes in with bitter rhyme
and something hums within the cellar door.

....................
*referring to Virginia Woolf's,  'To the Lighthouse', where the boy, cutting pictures from the catalog, sees the fridge 'fringed with joy'  - as he hears he is going to go the lighthouse.
*referring to 'Slaughterhouse Five' a novel by Kurt Vonnegut.
....................

 - But I don't have a cellar!

 - Oh! Shut up; and keep turning the handle.