Author’s Note:
This poem grew from an image rather than a narrative: an old man standing in quiet argument with time. He refuses the familiar notion of time as something measured, dripping patiently through an hourglass. Instead, he senses it as movement, swift, relentless, and indifferent, like a river that neither pauses nor persuades.
The poem does not seek to prove what time is, but to mirror how it is lived. Thought, memory, pride, and denial move alongside the current, yet none can outpace it. The final, unfinished line is intentional. Time does not wait for conclusions, and so the poem ends where life often does, mid-thought, mid-breath, while the river continues on.
This is not the best image for this Poem But it has to work for this one as the Poem is enough for this topic. . All thanks go to AI and its attempt to provide the image I asked for. Thus credit goes to AI for the image.
A Race of Pride
His steps, though steady, still passed at will,
Where life forged formal fates with fragile skill.
His face wore stories, sealed, untold before,
Yet longing, lost and lonely, pushed the score.
He stepped toward light, lost lines and lesser hope,
While nature nursed his nerves along that slope.
Like molten moments, marbled, marked with strife,
He wandered, wondering at the width of life.
They said time crawled, he scoffed at such delay,
Denied the drip of dust from glass and clay.
“No,” said his pride, “it rushes, rapid, wild,”
A river raced, and he remained its child.
He strained for proof, for reason rooted sure,
To grasp that current, test if it were pure.
Yet days swept past him, deaf to his demand,
Like water slipping straight through cupped hand.
Quiet, quicker still, the current closed its hold,
His face a river rutted, worn, grown old.
He fought the flow with breath and breaking plea,
Reached out to say that time was -
Copyright © 2026 Pat Fitzgerald
All Rights Reserved
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