The Sunny Hours
I think your species calls it a joke,
an incongruity that causes surprise
or bemusement; the minute hand
of the tallest clock tower in town,
jammed through the twelve at the top.
All the steel in the sector was scavenged
to build barracks and weaponry, and
that includes the guts of this very
structure. They'd never use wood to rebuild
something like this. Such is the
danger of value: everything worth
saving is either expensive or flammable.
But they haven't taxed the shade yet,
or found a way to burn it down, because
even wreckage casts a shadow,
and that drives them madder by the minute;
a resource in abundance, nay, omnipresence
that defies exploitation or commodification.
The spectre that haunts their war rooms
is the same one they'll never wring a cent from.
Emptiness is priceless, and the slender
darknesses are our last stand. What knowledge
we encrypt in the transience of sunshine,
what great manuscripts hide at the intersection
of detritus and light! The clouds break, and
though out of place, this minute hand still
tells the time. This information is as free as air.
Like the clock, we only count the sunny hours,
because that's when the void reveals what it knows.
