Ryan Jessup

The Grandfather Clock

as a child I would stand before it a classic brown and gold Howard Miller model in my grandmother's living room taking my small right hand and following the pendulum back and forth back and forth like a conductor to the music of time and when it would stop she would show me how to crank the weights back up to get it going again Oh and then the sounds of the tops of the hours Westminster Abbey and St. Michael's Cathedral and how they alone would remain in my mind through the years ringing as a remembrance of my sweet grandmother and her promise that the clock would someday become mine and she was right and passed it along to me on a Thanksgiving Day in my thirtieth year and as I look at it now in my living room the hands having slept on twelve o'clock for the past several days I can see how our lives are always in the hands of a Higher Power who decides by His will and His timing whether or not to keep us going

after midnight
the stroke of flower petals
hitting the floor