Boxes, Numbers, and Clocks

Who puts the numbers on our clocks,
then packs those clocks away in a box?
Do they ever feel like changing numbers around,
altering the way the hourly chimes might sound?
Would time pass more slowly, or stand still,
if there were no Noon or Midnight hour to fill?
Would Baby New Year and Grandfather Time
end up waiting in a long unemployment line?
Would the cuckoo in the clock lose his way
if he couldn't tell what time to go home each day?
Would the tides roll away, never to return;
would the moon fade away, and the sun fail to burn?
The way I see it, we might prevent these tragedies;
save time and tide and planets, the flowers and the trees:
We can stop these disasters from ever coming to pass,
by exchanging the clocks in those boxes, with a simple hourglass!

Lora Frikken ~ 9-13-03