Liturgy of the Hours

My old banjo clock used to run for eight days straight, but now it stops after only a few hours. I carry it to Rick’s Timeshop, where several hundred ticking, tocking voices mark eternity. While Rick peers into the innards behind my clock’s face, one of the cuckoo clocks on the wall chirps out the hour, accompanied, surprisingly, by the sound of water running over stones.  Thoreau’s dictum—time is but the stream I go a-fishing in—rises to the surface of my mind. 

cuckoos
counting out the hours
of my life
by a babbling brook—
I steal a dipperful of silver

                          ~Haibun Today 8:2, June 2014