Opportunity Poem by Catherine Casey

What happened last month
Is remembered in a second.
Using the same ratio
A lifetime can be reckoned.


Setting out an average
It’s a span of seventy five.
Converted into months
That’s nine hundred spent alive.


With eight hours for sleeping
Thus taking off a third,
Leaving us six hundred
Awake in time – concurred?


To turn it in to minutes
By sixty then divide.
In increments that’s ten
Of conscious time now plied.


Remembered for a second
Four weeks is now a once.
Counting takes ten minutes -
Our active life of months.


It’s finite - oh so finite
Seen from forty’s other side.
Even more significance
As seconds now subside.


This month catch the moment
Before it makes a second.
A juncture of recounting.
A life fulfilled not lessened.