Talking to the Ghosts of Clocks

This and that, she replied.
Replied. That’s how you know
You’re reading invented

Dialogue. No speaker
Reporting earlier
Conversation would say

That anyone replied.
Then she said, and I said,
And then, and then, and then.

Circadian, lunar,
We’re all tuned to rhythms
Of Earth’s local forces,

Even thoughts, even words.
Invented dialogue
Is detached from the clocks

That create speech rhythms,
And novelists are tugged
By tides nothing to do

With time in their fictions.
It’s easier to write
Scenes set decades ago

Than in another hour
Of the day, by the light
Of nonexistent moons.

Every body’s a clock
Tuned to more ghostly clocks
We all feel, she replied.