Oh Time, What Art Thou?
In our daily lives, we move within a conceptual world where time appears like a rigid container. We treat it as something to be spent, saved or lost. It structures our days and orders our lives—giving rise to an illusion of a solid past we carry and a solid future we anticipate or fear.
Yet when seen in the light of Dhamma (nature), this structure begins to soften.
Time is not a container in which life unfolds. It is a name we carelessly give to the ceaseless law of Anicca (impermanence).
When this is understood, even slightly, the way we live begins to shift. The day loses its weight, that to-do list stretches no more, and the burden of a past and future fades away.
It is from this seeing that the following reflection arises:-
Oh Time, What Art Thou?
O Time, what art thou—phantom or decree?
A shadow cast upon eternity.
A clockwork dream our restless minds devise,
To bind the boundless, veil the everwise.
The clock is but a mirage of our making,
Where we measure the life we think we are taking.
We conjure a past, a future adorned,
Whilst truth, like a river, flows ever unformed.
For time is no vessel, no fixed decree,
But the law of the leaf loosed from the tree.
’Tis Anicca—the pulse and the glide,
A boundless, unending, shimmering tide.
Thou dip’st thy toe where cool waters gleam,
Yet the stream hath fled to another-born stream.
The “thee” who arrived is already gone,
As the moment dissolves into light of the dawn.
No breath is the same as the one drawn before,
No wave greets the sand as the last on the shore.
Each heartbeat—a birth, each passing—a grace,
A ceaseless unfolding in measureless space.
The anger that burneth, the sorrow that sighs,
Are but fleeting clouds in vast open skies.
No feeling stands firm, no storm bides to stay,
It riseth in ripples, then fadeth away.
So walk in the flow, let thy story grow thin,
Let the weight of “thereafter” dissolve from within.
For to dwell in the flux, where the free waters be,
Is to finally awaken—and truly to see.
These reflections have also found voice in song. Listen to it here [https://youtu.be/-EoHPUPVra4]
And so the quest continues until every last leaf is overturned. There will be knocks and sharp corners along the way. There will be bouts of forgetfulness. But I have faith that everything has fallen into place, until this too is debunked…
In grace,
Joy Davis
30 June 2026