Fatalities
By Duane Ackerson
3 April 2006
[Editor's Note: Many thanks to Duane Ackerson for giving us permission to reprint his work for a limited time in conjunction with Greg Beatty's "Reading the Rhysling."]
Every time the clock strikes another hour, it falls over, dead, on the mantel. The clock strikes quite a few. Soon the mantel is littered with hours. Some are blue, some, gray, some, black, some, yellow; it begins to look like someone has been chopping up a rainbow for kindling and then, leaving the kindling by the clock instead of the fire. A natural mistake, knowing the clock's appetite for everything. Without historians to sort things out as they pass single file, a whole Roman Empire might rush through the mouth of the clock in a single afternoon, like newspapers leaping in the mouth of a fire.
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