For two weeks since my watch departed
I have scrutinized the skin of my left wrist
to see if my life is progressing.

What sequential madness demands I witness
each unfolding tick of my existence?

A new watch has appeared and my life is now digital
with no hands to point the way and no signs but
blinking numbers and a gentle chirp on every hour
reminding me to take heed of … what exactly?

Do we tack numbers on our lives to prove
we’ve passed from point A to point B
and to fill between the parentheses
in our obituaries?

Do the numbers measure real events—
a stream of moments as particles from the future
collide with the present to become the past?

Or is time all one piece—yesterday and tomorrow—
dancing cheek to cheek in eternal now?