The Moving Finger

I wrote this in June of 2004, just before I turned 38....


The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on.

I couldn’t remember where the quote came from, but it wound its way into my head this morning as I thought about the passage of time, the passage that grows fleeter with every finished moment.

The constant tick of time preys on me always at this time of year: the time of year when the anniversary of my birth swells forward to catch me up in its bittersweet song.

While I was ruminating on the profundity of the quote that sang a whisper in my ear, I went to the kitchen looking for the soul comfort found there. My kitchen is an oasis in the desert of time, a place where the moving finger seems to stop and somehow suspend its journey, where my purloined years are magically restored to me and the unjust passage reversed. In the aromatic steam arising from a newly baked gingerbread or the first taste of homemade gravy spooned over hand-mashed potatoes, the fresh innocence of childhood comes rushing to the fore, and I can easily feel myself surrounded by the sounds and sights of a hundred things past.

Today I had to satisfy those primal desires for comfort with an omelet and a glass of Ovaltine, but I was willing to take my comfort where it came. I poured the egg into the pan, topping it with bits of chive and peppers and chopped onion and thin slices of ham, listening with relish to the sibilant pop and sizzle, enjoying the wafting fragrance of the vegetables as they cooked. I stirred the Ovaltine into my milk, remembering a past thirty years gone when my mother had done the stirring for me. I smiled a little ruefully, because this was no longer my Ovaltine to love. It belonged now to the children of this house, the children whose memories thirty years hence would hark back to this room, these sounds, these scents, and the sight of their mother stirring chocolate into their milk.

I folded cheese into the omelet and sat with my meal, the source of the quote coming to me then as suddenly as the quote itself had earlier. The Rubaiyat, said a small voice from somewhere deep inside my brain. It’s from The Rubaiyat. The rest of the quote came back to me:


The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.


The words reminded me there is no eraser for the flagrant cad that is Time. He follows his own path, leaving behind in his wake only the memories of what has gone before and some measures of regret, sorrow, joy, sweetness and wistfulness. And I thought perhaps I am a heretic to Time, at once embracing him, in commune with him, and fighting him. I recognized my own struggle and knew that I would continue to tipple from the cup of nostalgia, gaining small mental profit from my attempts to recreate what has already been written.

I ate, and in my mind’s eye, I saw myself change from child to mother and heard from somewhere the rolling march that will bring my own children on their journey to what is yet to be.

Ten centuries have passed since Omar Khayyam’s time, and still we watch his Moving Finger.