With A Foot In Each Century

It never occurred to me when I was young that I might live my life in two different centuries. I just missed being a baby boomer, being part of the 'silent generation'. But I always thought of myself as a 'war baby', being born in the middle of WWII. 

So I lived most of my life in the 20th Century and I have to say it was a much better time than this 21st Century is turning out to be. I'll be beginning my 80th year on this good earth in a little over a month, so the aging thing may account for me spending more time with my memories than in present day. And it probably accounts for how much this poem spoke to me:

Catalog With Illustrations by Marvin Bell

The beauty of an old desk blotter where the ink stains grew into the shape of ships in a turbulent ocean,

and the ticking of the clock in the sunlight thickened by dust.

The clacking of the typewriter keys, the big zipper sound of  the carriage return,

and the sound of the struck bell muffled in the drapes.

The air was rich with time, when there still was time.

The letter ripened slowly in the typewriter.

The minute hand took a second to move one digit.

Under the glass that covered the desktop, a map and family photos.

Bell's poem also speaks to me because until computers took their place, it was at a desk with the clacking of the typewriter keys where I always wanted to be as a child and was as an adult. Yes, it is a computer on my desk now, though I still covet a typewriter, and it is at my desk where I spend much of each day where the air is rich with time and there is still a little time.