I got in a quarrel with Time

A poem about beating time's tyranny

“treasures unmeasurable…” PC: Reena Kapoor ©2025 All Rights Reserved. Instagram: @1StarDusty

I got in a quarrel with Time

I quarreled again
with time, today,
that strident fool!
I tire of his hubris,
his silly ridicule,
When I run out,
what will you do?

He’s fully convinced
life travels one way.
The losses mount,
dusted when I’m done.
The end renders you
pauper as you were
a naked newborn!

That’s where you’re wrong,
dear time, I retort,
Life’s no rigid arrow,
nor a one lane way,
nor a planet’s pull,
nor a written fate.
So my questions ensue…

How will you repeal days
I’ve already lived?
love I’ve been given,
love I’ve given away?
How will you make me
unsee, unfeel, untaste,
unhear, or uninhale?

If it’s lived it’s sealed,
embossed, engraved,
in indelible scripts,
’neath your shifting sands.
Our brimming pasts
lock treasures in
chests veiled from theft.

So threaten all you want.
But do come by
for my casual display
of the things I keep
to show our gods
what I constructed
my immortalities from!

###

reena | 2025

Where this poem came from

This poem was triggered by a rather tragic tale of local parents I read. They lost their sixteen-year old son to a genetically triggered cancer. In an article I read, the father remarked he would go through it all again just to have the sixteen years he had with his son. I was wonderstruck by the Dad’s courage and his ability to reframe the loss so radically. After the devastation of losing a child, he somehow didn’t lose sight of what even death could not take away—those first sixteen years.

I had previously felt similar awe for an older friend who also lost her son, and remarked to me: "i did lose his future, but i still have his past!" You can read the poem Endless March I wrote for her in this old post:

Chasing gratitude

Reframing, reclaiming time

Part of our human condition is the lamentation of the passage of time, of things we cherish. We claim time flies by and how did we get so old…whether we are 30, 50 or even 100! Time’s the stuff life is made of, so naturally we want to hold on to it.

This poet dares to rethink such premises, and associated lamentations. Life’s so much more than mere time, she asserts. After all, time may run out but it can’t take away what’s already ours, what we’ve already experienced, consumed, inhaled. She audaciously responds to time’s taunts by claiming she keeps treasures time’s passage cannot take away.

So dear reader, if you ever feel time’s passing by too quickly, just stop and think about all that you’ve already experienced, been given, found, had, still have! Nothing in the world can take that away. Those times, those experiences live on, in you, us, forever.

In other words, let’s refuse to look at life simply as a linearly progressing path that’s disappearing behind us, and instead as a treasure chest of the many loves that arrived, the multitude of friendships we found, ways in which this body and mind served us, purpose we were led by, our creations, the raising of our children and other animals, duties we fulfilled, beauty, nature, magical places we discovered, and much more—all of that we’ve already experienced! All of these become and remain ours, living within us, and forming the very substrate of this wondrous existence for eternity!

They’re all mine.
So there, dear Time!

Somehow thinking about it in this way shifted my focus, making me deeply grateful.

I hope it does the same for you, dear reader! Do share your thoughts.