Timeless

   For James Green

There’s no such thing as time, if we believe

the mystics, for time is just

the measurement of objects relative

to space. A day is only such from our

perspective, here on little planet Earth.

There is no time, they say, there’s only now

and only ever has been now.

 

And that was what was on my mind before

I fell asleep last night, a night which may

be seen as little more than an illusion,

depending on your mystical perspective.

 

Mystics be damned! I like the measurement

of time. It’s useful if you have a train

to catch, or a wife whose birthday needs

remembering. I wonder how I would

arrange to meet my old friend Jon if time

could not be measured. Here I am in France,

not far from where he lives. ‘When shall we visit?’

he’d asked. A simple ‘Be here now’ would not have worked.

 

Thinking of time, I calculated that,

in just two years, we will have known each other

for forty years, which isn’t bad as friendships go.

Next month, I meet with Pasc, another old friend.

Continuing my time-related thoughts,

I realised our friendship was now forty-one.

And then, a glorious epiphany –

this month I’ve known James Green for fifty years!

I wondered what it was that he was doing with

his non-existent time while I was starting

to feel a bit old. Maybe he’s unconsciously

tapping a rhythm on the nearest surface,

a habit every drummer seems to have.

Perhaps he’s tutoring some reluctant child,

I thought, or getting ready for a walk

with Bex, or talking to his cat, or writing

a song… which brought me back to Pasc and Jon.

 

Pascal, as he then was, had been recruited

to play the bass in my first band.

At our first gig, he’d had to play unplugged

because we’d left his lead behind and didn’t have

the time to get back to the house and pick it up;

a better way of making friends I do not know.

And Jon and I had spent our sixth-form years

strumming guitars and talking music

and searching, always searching, for a bloody plectrum.

 

We could have been a four-piece band, I think,

and picture us rehearsing never-written songs:

Pasc with his unplugged bass, Jon looking in van

for that elusive pick, me singing

my dreadful adolescent lyrics,

and, always in the background somewhere, James

keeping the non-existent time on his drums.