The clock on the shelf

I loved to visit my grandmother's house
When I was little.
That's where my mother seemed happiest
Talking with her mother and sister,
Freed for a brief time from daily chores,
And the loneliness of isolation
With her husband gone all day at work
And only small children for company.
Laughing around the kitchen table,
As they recalled past adventures,
My mother seemed relaxed and content.
So I did too.

We usually left for home in daylight,
Old car, bad roads, pets at home
All called us home before darkness came.
But a few times, for now forgotten reasons,
Iced-over engine, someone falling sick,
Or my father's leaving to go elsewhere,
And returning to pick us up.
We stayed at my grandmother's house
Past the daylight hours.

Darkness transformed everything.
No more walking the fields to pick wildflower,
Or playing with Aunt Helen's trove of little treasures,
Or sitting at the big square dinner table,
Feeling special enthroned on the Monkey Wards catalog,
So I could reach the plate set before me.

It was dark, the rooms were quiet.
Conversation had stopped.
All was still-------except THE CLOCK.
It sat on its shelf in the kitchen,
Above the sink that had no water.
After the talking had stopped for the night,
And with no electricity to break the silence,
The clock ruled the night.
I would sit, bleary-eyed with sleep,
Waiting, and wanting to be home in my bed,
Feeling lost and alone, a pit in my stomach,
At every TICK-TOCK the clock intoned.
Odd that the clock went unheard during the day,
But at night, the sound was overwhelming, and unceasing.
I will always connect that sound with waiting,
Waiting, and filled with the dread
That what we wait for
Will never come to be.