Time's Disgrace

         

Time's Disgrace

An old farmhouse out on the open prairie, left alone with its stories untold of those that came before, an open shell for anyone to peer inside to the skeletal remains of the structure. Life begins as a pile of boards and nails, only to end cold and forgotten to fall apart over time.

The old frame quietly rests with only the wind to whisper through the walls and windowless openings. It stands to an earlier time when children's voices and laughter would ring through, now only breath from a breeze gently swaying a loose board held by a single nail.

The tall grass now overgrown around the porch where evening sunsets were watched, and storms rolled through giving protection from the driving rain. Open gaps of time rotting away, show the blue sky peering through, to the planks below. Bright lines of light dance across them throughout the day as the sun travels across the sky.

It has stood as a test of time, a well constructed house built by hands that worked hard to make every seam align, make every mark line up, all nails driven in hard with the swing of a hammer. A strong back, thoughtfulness added to the structure with quality and care with no evidence of the builder present as the house slowly falls into the silence of time's disgrace.

We are built up with a strong foundation and last until pieces eventually start to fall. As slowly, time replaces the strong walls with aching rotted boards, we age and grow older until the day when the one piece that holds the rest together is broken under the weight it strains to withstand. The rest collapse and fall to the ground, when finally, as everything does, it returns to the earth from which it came.

The still of time stands rigid and firm against the strength of wood, steel and concrete. Nothing passes only fading away slowly crumbling into dust. We look upon time as something to be controlled, something to be saved as fools.

It passes a second at a time, turning into minutes and hours, then days and years. We can't slow it down, we can't stop it, and it is incoercible to any man. Born to aging, we are dying from the start, only to spend our lives incomparable as only a pinprick in time.

When our time is done, we are wrought in death as time beyond our lives continues unstopping, unending and never ceasing. It stands, an eerie reminder that life eventually ends no matter how well we build ourselves.

Carl W. Sudbrink

19 October 2010