Plop! And so the journey began, and already its has gone plop! plop! plop! plop! so many multiple times that we have lost count of the plop-plops yet left ahead of us. So come, come along, there’s no time, Time is passing plop-plop-plop and we cannot let Time pass without keeping pace with it, else Time will leave us behind and you know what happens to those that Time leaves behind. They become the past, left behind, no longer within reach, forever irretrievable, gone. Those that Time leaves behind as it passes, plop-plop-plop, become the material of what we can only remember, or remember not. There is another word for them, but let us not use that word now, not at this time, not at beginnings, not when we have just set out. Come! Make haste! Mind Time. We have to be on our way, there’s no other perceivable way now, we already left. Plop! Plop! Plop!

But where to? And who might you be? To command in such fashion? You may have a point, and some pull, but if only your name was Desire.

Desire?

Are you surprised? Who could you be but Desire that I should even be persuaded ? Or even hear? Your entreaty: Come! Why else would I listen? Give me another reason, else let me be. Let Time pass, and let me be bypassed. For why else would I make the effort? Desire. And Desire alone, the first and last and the only one. The temptress Time employs. What else is Time but a catalogue of Desire? Sought. Secured. Or squandered. That is how Time passes. Plop! Plop! Plop! Plop! Stepping stone to stepping stone to stepping stone. For beyond Desire we may all well lose step with Time and become what Time leaves behind. What do you say? What are we without Desire? Think of yourself devoid of it. And prove to me you are still one of our species and remain alive. Why would you be here if not for Desire? Why would you follow Time? Why would you not wave it ahead, go on, proceed, plop! plop! plop! I am done, this is it, this is where it ends because this is the end of Desire, the use before date has ticked over.

Else, get up, walk. Time is travelling. Its Temptress is too, on silken blades that bleed all the way. It’s the way it tells itself, Time, its wake is a crowded wake. And bloodied, like disembodied, ageing Merlot. But you do not wish to become part of it yet. You want to come along, there’s more to want, there’s more to seek, there’s more to grasp and cling to, and more to quaff and quench. Oh Desire. Clip my nails so they may sprout again in shapes of waxing moon; and sprout again my nails so they may be clipped again in shapes of waning moon. As long as there’s a thing to do, or things, as long as there’s desire. If nothing else, a clipped nail, and the illusion of slices of the moon. One last drop down the throat. Who knows there may yet be room. One last rattle of air probing the suburbs of the heart. Who knows what may yet lie there lost and to be found. One last dribble of the iris. Who knows what it may settle on and go still. One last pulse on the vein. Who knows what it may yet tell. There’s Time? It isn’t the last? Who knows there may be yet more. Even after this, even when it has been such a long dying. And yet we are not dead. And yet we are being beckoned. Come! Make haste! Desire. Time’s temptress. One more time.

Time, it travels, and if there’s a thing to do, or things, you travel along too. Plop-plop! Clop-clop. Cloppety-clip. Throbbetty-throb.

It’s Time. And it is passing. Come then, say plop! Where have we arrived here from? And where might we be headed?

The wind, it sings
And breaks the wings of birds
The wolves, they howl
And they’re minding the herds.