recollection

I can vividly recall,
from years ago when I was small,
my mother warning me that time
to play outside was in decline.
"Fifteen minutes left" she'd say
"You'd best get on with no delay!"
To me the words were meaningless —
might just as well be "snib o bhess."
I parsed the grammar fine enough;
to hear her speaking wasn't tough.
It's just that with no reference point,
no mechan'sm with which to join
one moment's passing to the next;
No way to place within context
the heft, the mass, of one minute,
how much or not to fit in it,
it mattered not at all to me
if I had fifteen, ten or three.
The future wasn't, nor the past,
just the ever-stretching, ever vast
present moment, always here;
Rich, untainted by the smear
of the limits and confines
that come with knowing about time.