Breaking the Clock by Thomas McColl
Arts Richmond
Online - 01 September 2020

Just as Mum breaking a ruler
in half across my back
didn’t in any way stop
30 centimetres
from still being 30 centimetres,
me breaking the clock
(which just so happened to be
the family heirloom on the mantelpiece
that Mum had told me never to touch),
by turning back the second hand
(then, as I stood on tiptoe
to keep on doing it,
snapping it off),
couldn’t, of course,
stop time
from still being time.
How was I to know,
aged six,
that standing on tiptoe was me attempting
to grow up too fast?
But that was what I did,
and time couldn’t have that,
so it straightaway grabbed me
by the scruff of the neck
and frogmarched me,
with a steady step,
to the moment
when Mum tried,
in vain,
to stop me
growing up any more
by breaking the ruler across my back.
from ABOUT TIME, the 2019 anthology of shortlisted entries from The Roger McGough Poetry Prize. Copies of this Anthology can be purchased for £5 including P&P from Arts Richmond.
Breaking the Clock by Thomas McColl
EGM and AGM
Wednesday 2 December 2020, 19:30
Online via Zoom
Young Writers Festival Competition
The Roger McGough Annual Poetry Prize 2020
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