Pocket Watch by David J. Costello

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.