Longcase Clock

In the farmhouse parlour it has stood unmeasured
years in silence, a presence without reverberation;
hefty, magisterial, its chimes once reached
the furthest corners of all rooms, stirred
hardened dust, each half-hour marked by a note
waveringly clear as a tuning fork's, tingling
the flesh of wax-honeyed pine. One could speak
of grandfathers, trees, but for these angles
housing the cogs with their soft organic tick
fallen somewhere between telling, listening.
Just larger than human size (what voice-box
could we devise for high-flown oak?) the clock
casts the warm shadow of household god, familiar;
laid flat, it is roughly the length that will
carry us out into silence. How comforting
it would be to pull the case-door open and,
in that cool space, draw the chains slowly through
your fingers, instil a rhythm that could gauge
time's oceanic sift through hourglass waves.
Emblems of lost seasons, tides, four gilded shells
frame the dial; under the single hand, a plant
of strawberries ripens. Behind the cracked
parchment of its face, the clock waits like
a polite guest who would speak, but only
at the right moment, into a perfect silence.