Losing track of time

From mixing up the days of the week, and confusing my students, I've progressed to jumbling up the months, and confusing everyone, including myself. Once, I even dated a past event to the future...

Time: A random day in June.

D: When did we go for the ambassador dinner?

Me: July.

*silence*

Me again: Sorry. It can't be July. It's June now huh. I mean May.

When something like that happens, I comfort myself that God exists outside time, and perhaps I'm soaking up more of his divine attributes. 

Still, when July comes round, I pull myself out of my state of time confusion and pay homage to the One who is outside time, but reveals Himself to us through time. And for me, much of it took place in July.

On 17 July 2000, I started day 1 of a 6-year bond. On 17 July 2007, I left Singapore for Timor. What lies between these two sentences? Like Luci Shaw wrote in a poem, "so much of life happens between the verses/of the psalms". 

And what about the years between July 2007 to July 2011? That's hidden in the poem below. To Him who alone knows, and to myself, who in losing track of time, is grasping at eternity now.

I lose track of time.

The days go by in a blur of joy and tears

like a magical carousel

on which

little children,

big children,

overgrown children

spin

round and round and round

through past present and future

to the haunting echo of half-forgotten angels’ songs.

I lose track of time.

The weeks stretch on as one soft, smooth, silky ribbon

that, though fraying at the edges,

twirls and swirls,

floats and flits

through the air that I breathe in sighing

and out groaning.

I lose track of time.

The months run through the eye of the needle

like a thread pulled

in and out,

in and out

by an invisible hand

through a patchwork of odd shapes and clashing colours

when viewed up close, too close.

I lose track of time.

The years flow onward like a meandering river,

its strength hidden in a cool silence

its resolve, unseen like undercurrents

carving its way through the mountain

and casts it into the sea.