It moves herky-jerky
I watch it go
round and round
second-hand time
and try to think of
something to write
about garlic chives
in a flower pot
painted by
Vincent van Gogh
but the tick-tock
has gotten into my head
and I’m thinking
I’ll never see that second again.
A sweeping arc
and before I’m ready
sixty of them
have flown away
like the passenger
pigeon, extinct, missed,
ill-used and no more
but not forgotten…
like the painting of
a common thing
yet now immortalized…
perhaps in this poem.

Debi Swim lives in West Virginia. She write daily and most often to prompts from various wonderful poetry blogs.