Like Clocks

(after Dali's "The Persistence of Memory")

My tree was bent long ago. 
I have seen the kisses of clocks 
come and go, come and go 

until they melted into stone. 
And I have learned that hearts,

like clocks, when misused, 
grow long faces, become twisted 
into strange ecstasies 

of time lost and forgotten. 
Once unbreakable, now soft and piteous, 
they search desperately for one another 

yet cannot convene, eyes and hands 
abraded by harsh words and weather. 
Each clock is an elsewhere, 

invariably different from any other; 
but clocks like hearts tend to wither 
further, drape themselves like sheets 

over branches of trees and broken bodies. 
They even strangle birds, infect 
soft supine feathers with toxic rust. 

The ocean has even forsaken them, 
they shall be laid out to dry 
in the sun forever. Brittle as death, 

fossilized at an immovable time 
when a heart like a clock 
was once broken.