The More You Have to Lose
 

Time flies, and a year can go by in a day.
Look at your watch.  Do your eyes say 2:45 or 9:15?
The more you have, the more you can give away.

You know the feeling, having no money, having to stay
With relatives when you travel, unable to say what you mean:
Time lies, and a year can go by in a day.

When my father turned into my son, as in a play,
All the fun took place offstage.  What about the missing queen?
The more you have, the more you can give away.

The less you believe.  The more you wish you could pray.
Like a clock without hands, the truth of a face remains unseen.
Time lies, and a year can go by in a day.

With an elbow on the counter, and no passions left to sway,
The all-night waitress smokes butt after butt, coughing in-between:
The more you have, the more you can throw away.

Ocean, what is on the other side of all that blue and gray?
What does the grass know of yesterday's vanished green?
Time lies, and a year can go by in a day.
The more you have, the more you can give away.

--David Lehman