Pink Sunday

(Advent, anytime)

 

I’m not sure anymore

I first heard it was for Mary

Then for shepherds

Then for joy

That names the whole season

Third Sunday in this Christian season

Hanukkah is replete and resolved

Ramadan is far off

Kwanzaa near off

Diwali happened in colors that were glory

And Holi, even more color-resplendent, not so far past

For all the other days in

Commemorations,

There are all our calendars

We respect them parochially

By denomination, other division

 

We have a single clock, I guess

The one that keeps mean time

That is also Greenwich

 

Did you know

(I learned this recently) that

The first official mark of the equator

Got it wrong?

There is now a smaller one in Quito

That is more accurate

We do know that leap day

Doesn’t fill in the gap quite right

In earthly Gregorian days

And so the clock, atomically, must

Adjust for that,

Now and then

A second here, a nanosecond there

 

The notion of fill-in time is a relief

Because in it we say

That perfection yet again is an illusion

This side of the divine

Even when our clocks are right,

A change of shape in Earth

Or slippage in the sun’s relationship

And what is set is no longer

Set

And that has to be all right

 

It is

We can rest

(we have to)

Knowing

That precision is a neighborly matter

A finite issue with a ragged edge

As most countable measures behave

 

Not to say we shouldn’t strive for accuracy

We must

But even when we design bridges and

All crucial material constructions

We design from a foundation

Of a transcendental number from an

Unresolved equation

 

So nothing solved for keeps

For something squeezes over here

And crevasses over there

We have to fix it

 

Otherwise, we sit once again

At the feet of Ozymandias,

And the feet are clay

 

This is not bad news

For some design, some build, some fix

So we have a village

With the cities and oases on the plains

 

That is joy

That is pink

That is Advent already here

And like the faultless gerund

Always on the move

 

C L Couch

 

 

<a href=”https://www.freepik.com/free-photos-vectors/background”>Background image created by Freepik</a>