Passing the Time

(from FRA, The Forked River Anthology)
 
And so be it.
Time is a bit
of wire with spring.
Hear it ticking.
 
Time is not money in Bras, and M. J-C Amen, the watch-mender, spends most of his leaning against the railings outside his shop. He is cheerfully resigned to convening a symposium of old timers. It’s the most  peaceable gathering in town. The men have time for one another. I only know one by name, M. Edmond, a dapper little man who always smiles on passing in the street. Sometimes we exchange a few words on the state of the heavens, lightly touching on Descartes’ ‘fire, water, air, stars, sky’. But above all the sun which accords with his disposition. I didn’t doubt that here  was a man who savored ‘the fruits of the earth, and all its comforts’.
                                         After the Natty and Stanis fracas, to recover my beautiful temperament I stop to congratulate M. Amen. Both dials of the two-faced clock tower are in agreement, a rare event. Noticing M. Edmond was not amongst men I hesitated to ask why. Last sighted, he was coming out of Dr J’Espoir’s office, carrying a large medical envelope. As it was drizzling our exchange was brief.  ‘My heart’s a  wonder’, he said. ‘It’s beating too fast like an ado in love’, and he sauntered off, impeccably dressed as ever in a light white summer suit with a cravat, his cane in the air.  
 
I ask the men, and M. Amen shakes his head.  

IM M. Edmond

He stood outside the watch-shop.
Outside time, outside time
And the passing fair would stop
to hear the joke of the day.
They’d stand there laughing away.
 
You hadn’t a care in the world.
Outside time, outside time
Was the walking stick you twirled
a baguette or ficelle?
It spun too fast to tell.