5:30 to 6:00

The minute hand is on the six, there’s another half hour to the hour, and the cat is on my lap, and the document is blank, and the sun is shining through the window.

I can’t help but think, can’t help but feel, this is the hour of sweet repose, that I’m dreaming here, in my rickety chair—a perfect moment—I daren’t let go.

And the storms have come and gone today, with hail and snow and wind, but the sun is falling on the day. Night must surely win.

The minute’s on the seven now. Twenty-five minutes left. The hours change, the hands return, the hour’s back again.

The sun is setting in the west as it has set before, and here the shadows, darken, lengthen, grow.

The cat wants to be fed, and I just want to sleep.

The eight has come! The sun still stands. I’m not sure my life is not dream or if I wake within my bed. Surely here’s a fantasy, the sun descending low. Like myth portrayed—the light of heaven dies! Time is passing still. It feels unreal.

Here comes the nine. The cat is mewing by her bowl. Her appetite’s the only clock she knows. I’ve tried to make her see the hands—but who can share a dream? She’s hungry now, so now’s the time she must be fed.

She stares at me to hypnotize, but I already dream, for I’m the watcher of the minute hand.

And ten, blest ten, is here, completing other counts. Not time, though. Dreams make little sense, and if ten completes a set, a dream and time must pass beyond completion. For time and dream, they never end, but cycle all around. There’s nothing to begin nor end—only the sun must die. If he will rise again (I pray he does) the dream will not survive. Reality, reality, reality.

One more eleven makes—nonsense upon nonsense. The last five minutes of the hour, of this last half hour, of this peculiar dream my cat can’t understand, is here. The sun will set regardless. If I shoot my clock the sun will set regardless. The clock will turn, be it right or wrong, the sun will set regardless.

And what was this perfect hour, which was but half an hour? Half an hour dreamed and half the hour awake, but which was which? The half I knew and saw? The half which passed unknown? My random thoughts, inscribed here, little meaning bear.

But twelve is coming! Death appears! The sun has yet to die, but my dream of an hour must end. A minute more, just seconds now, the dream of time will die.

6:00