A New Year’s Lament

A New Year’s Lament (a poem) 

I mourn the way we once marked passages
by distance rather than time, how we
measured miles instead of minutes,
felt the fleeting nature of our very selves
instead of seconds.

Now the calendar is a compass,
folding distance with a stop watch,
marking the New Year as a new born,
making sunrise inferior
to the alarm clock.

No offense to the day or year,
but I fear we become less real
the more we wait for a date
to stop, to start,
to live.