How to value a second?
How to find its worth in a myriad of other seconds that seem
To have no value of their own?
The second stood beside a church in Ischia
as the earthquake strikes
The second walking onto Las Ramblas
as the terrorist drives through
The second you choose to stand at that precise spot
where the bomb explodes
The second you catch your future lover’s eye and
she smiles back at you
The second that a life is conceived
in love or in rape or by accident or by design
The second you realise that the future is not to be taken for granted
not how you imagined it would be in your pride
The second you realise that you do not act alone...
…cannot act alone.
Can a second have value? Is there a price to be paid for its passing?
Are there just myriads of seconds interconnected,
neutral and unthinking in their anonymity
uncaring that, as one second ticks into another,
lives are taken,
given,
created,
wasted,
watched,
measured,
and unnoticed?
Kim Helen James
22nd August 2017
