Pocket Watch
Forgotten, in a bottom drawer,
your pocket watch
has suddenly remembered
how to count.
It started practicing
last night.
Each tick and tock a drip
that filled the darkness up.
When I was born
you said the midwife
asked to use your pocket watch
to calibrate my pulse.
Now it’s doing it again.
My heart is racing
in a childish way,
it can’t keep up.
I leave the room still waiting
for the watch to stop.
David J. Costello is a winner of the Welsh International Poetry Competition and is widely published. His pamphlets are Human Engineering, (Thynks Publishing 2013) and No Need For Candles,(Red Squirrel Press 2016). Heft, his first full collection from (Red Squirrel Press 2020) won 3rd Prize in the 2021 Poetry Book Awards for best collection.