Father Time

Photo from franzo, Father Time--Weku, November 2018. https://deals.weku.io/community-deals/@franzo/father-time

When did time begin?
Who thought of the concept of time?
These questions have kept me thinking once. I came across with the book, The Timekeeper by Mitch Albom, and from his own rendition of the history of time, ​this poem was inspired.

In a town unknown breathed once a man,
Who lives happily before time began.
In a shuck by the misty river,
A history was unwritten, ‘twas lost forever.

He goes by the name Dor, which no one knew,
For his life is an artifact undiscovered many years ago.
Dor was still a bouncing young boy, running
When he developed a fascination in counting.

As time passes, he has established a delightful family back then
Blissfully living with his wife, Alli, and three children.
But still, to count and make numbers is but his favorite undertaking
A thing only he has attempted amongst all human being.

He goes by a work so tedious but no one has recorded
For in quiet and in content, without riches he has existed.
A lucrative work he wasn’t engaged,
For he chose to be a measurer of anything, a job that’s unrewarded.
​
Counting his breaths, measuring the river’s depth.
He would put his fingers together and make a sound for each.
While his best friend grew rich and obtain slaves as workers,
Dor would stay put and count them working for his pal’s towers.
​
With his fascination, all things possible he tries to measure,
He used scribbled tablets, notched sticks, stones and twigs
Invented the hourglass, used the sun to signify the hour
Time keeping then is an invention of his but science credited to others.

Soon, without him noticing his wife started to get weak
He died in his arms; he is counting her last breaths
Until she breathed no more, and disintegrated into dust
The same fate fell to his children, but to him…did not.

Almost all he knew have left the face of this Earth
Except him who tried to measure the gift of time and was cursed.
In a cave he was banished for many centuries
To hear man’s plea for more days, more hours, more minutes.

Today, there was a time humans allotted to everything.
To-do-lists, planners, sticky notes, cork boards for reminders.
Sundials, alarms, pendulum in a grandfather’s clock swinging.
Everything's attributed to time—a word for something no one once cares.

Were it not for a man named Dor and his fascination in counting.
Time would neither have existed, nor rang and ticked.
But repercussions direct Dor’s deep passion in measuring
That he devised time, was cursed, and in a cave banished

He then became known as FATHER TIME—locked up in a cave,
Hearing pleas of men for time extensions they crave.