A wristwatch is a handcuff, it shackles
you to the consciousness of time; likewise,
time is no longer free to fly about
on its own; it is attached at the wrist
to your body, to your heartbeat's tattoo,
to the inequalities of the breath,
and to the slower, subtler cranio-
sacral rhythm that very few of us
 
notice, fewer even than those who note
the lopsided rhythm of the heart, man
slogging up a steep hill with a wounded
leg, favoring it, spending as little
time with pressure on it as possible,
shackled in his case not to time but pain.