Time flows forwards, backwards and in-between, yet in a shadowed glance slows to an imperceptible pulse, a heartbeat, a rhythmic fluctuation of regular irregularity.
But was that glance real or just imaginary?
Is time the beating of my heart or the flow of my existence?
Perhaps time is just in my mind or perhaps time is what I see of the world. 
Time, a glance, a thought, a perception, an image, a deep feeling. 
Did I breathe time?  Can I breathe time? Is time breathable?
Time folds in multiple ways from my unfolding experience and leaves me breathless.
Time is the moment of love, the despair of death, and the memories of living.

Time is essential to being yet beyond anything I can touch, feel, smell, hear or even see.
Time is not tangible; the clock betrays my understanding, for time is not contained or containable.
It is not an objective entity but a myriad of flows.
Tasteless yet intoxicating it makes me wonder about fixity and flux.
But I see time in the death of my brethren, in the lives of the new born and in the struggles of those around me.
I celebrate time in the fixed moments of birthdays and anniversaries of those I love.
I touch time when I hold the aged and feel the soft new skin of a new born baby.
I smell time in the monasteries, museums, shopping malls and hospitals and I smell time on the breath of all I know.

Time is real in its unreality.
It does not escape me for I am time. 
I am time in the wonderings of my mind and in the existence of being.
I was time and will be time in the moments before those and those yet to happen.
When I am no more time ceases to exist.
Without me there is no time and without you there is no me, and without all there is no time.
So, who am I?  I am no god for I am you.
I am the flow of time; my past is my future and my present is my past.


Submitted by Patrick Dawson, 27-03-2025