A Poem about Old Man Time

Time

by Callula Xu

Years slip past like minutes,
Now even millennia are seconds,
Mere seconds!
I am old by your standards,
But I am quite young in the universe.
You would know me by a false name,
Old Man Time.

I am here, but not there.
I am there, but not here.
I am many places,
I am also nothing.
I heal your hearts of grief and sorrow,
I also steal away your years,
I am a concept to you,
Yet I am not merely a concept to others.

You make laws to bind me to your primitive minds.
You hasten to restrain me,
To try to tame me.
It is foolish and useless.
For you to bind me,
You would have to understand
That I am not a concept,
But your fear of the unknown restrains you.
I have never seen a sillier,
More foolish species than you, in all my years.
Living in fear created by yourselves,
Always restrained.

I am Old Man Time to you,
But you cannot grasp the immensity of the universe,
For you define everything with false names.
You struggle to create chaos in the world,
But you bring in peace much more slowly than chaos.
This is the imbalance,
I predict,
Which will destroy your species.
Finally, a day to look forward to.

Callula Xu is a nine-year-old prodigy who speaks Mandarin at home and English in her Bay Area (CA) middle school. With her vivid imagination, she has already had two children's books published. God and Nature columnist Walt Hearn was so struck by her astoundingly adult vocabulary and use of words that he has contributed a Foreword for a forthcoming collection of her poems.