Gerald England, sleepless in limbo

The Spring Haiku 2008 blog is now in full swing. There's a link on the sidebar. Before long in the Poet-in-Residence residence, as in millions of other residences, many timepieces will require an obligatory 1 hour adjustment. Will it be 1 hour forward or 1 hour back? Forward or back? P-i-R has an aide-memoire.-
Spring forward,
Fall back.
Gerald England, widely published poet and editor of the award-winning New Hope International Review website, has kindly given permission for a timely poem to appear on Poet-in-Residence.
A curious thing is that we are always advised by the authorities to adjust our timepieces at 2 o'clock in the morning, or is it 3 o'clock? No wonder then that in the England household, where there are more than 13 timepieces, the poet finds himself in limbo time...he speaks for millions!

Limbo Time

two-thirty in the morning
i am awakened by my wife
with 'do you want a cup of tea?'
a rhetorical question
it is already made.
we sit in bed supping the welcome brew
'the clocks go back,
we can have an extra hour in bed'
mentally i count them,
bedside, microwave, video,
computer, grandfather -
a baker's dozen or more
it will take me at least an hour
to adjust them all
it is two fifty in the morning
or is it only ten to two?
we are living in limbo time
have we lived an hour twice
or did time stand really still?
i turn the pillows over
and try again to sleep.

c)-Gerald England 2005

There's a useful P-i-R link to the world of Gerald England in the sidebar.

P-i-R takes his hat off to anyone who understands the mysteries of the video machine.