The Freak Show

Bored with plastic armies,
he climbs onto the parlor loveseat
and watches the wide expression of the clock.
He doesn’t know what time is,
doesn’t know how in no time
those numbers will fill his days
the way water fills a bath
into which an exhausted man
lowers himself, not wanting to rise.
Sun and moon gaze back at him
from the glaze of the silver frame,
each with a human face,
his own face mirrored there.
Look closer, his mother says,
and you can see the small hand move.
And he leans closer now, steadied
in her arms, the hand a winded runner
lapped on the track. That’s hours,
she says, the big hand’s minutes, the quick,
seconds. And the boy fingers the pivot
anchoring them, his touch
stirs with the machine.
I’m older now, and now, and now. The gears
start to tick through every room of that house.