Clocks

How sensitive, how thin
(beneath we're a bundle of nerves),
this wrap of skin
covering the curves
of bountiful, doomed flesh.
Inside, the stations
of the pulse pump fresh
red, ticking off quarts and gallons.
There are clocks inside the heart,
head, crotch--wound and cocked--
ready to go off, to stop or start
our day's machinations, codes locked
into each cell. We're metered birth to death:
every heartbeat, every breath.

by Philip Miller