Time (a poem on what time is)

[Babyguile]

I posted this on the forums some time ago but have since edited it to make it clearer and more coherent. I saw the quote which I've written and cited in a novel I was reading at the time and it inspired me to write an answer to it. I'm not well-read at all in the philosophy of time and I simply used my imagination and wanted to create something that was natural and beautiful yet profound.

I'm basically answering a question in poetic form. I saw the quoted line in Fool's Errand by Robin Hobb. I hope you like it

"Is time the wheel that turns, or the track it leaves behind?"

Time is the controller of all things.
Time is the ageing of everything.
Time is the sags and wrinkles,
the length of life.
Time is the bane of mountains and the draught of rivers,
the destroyer and the maker.
Time is the never ending race to the present.

The wheel is never in the present.
It pushes its way through it and never looks back.
It does not stop to heed the wreckage it causes.
No 'time' for piteous mountains or rivers.
The wheel sees only what is before it,
and never behind.
It strives to reach the future.

The track is history.
It is the path of the past.
It is the hare and the tortoise,
the first place followed by the last.
It is that which has happened before the wheel.
That which never gets looked at.
For the wheel is the one that moves,
and never looks back.

So is time the wheel or the track?
There would be no track without the wheel,
and no wheel without the track.
No present without the past.
And no past without time moving the present along.
So the two must work in harmony with each other,
and time their master.

Though in modern times, things are very different
Now 'time' is the Wheel.
The clock and watch with faces
that turn round and round,
and bare no wrinkles.
Turning forwards and round again.
But they leave no track.
For no one glances at the track anymore.
The track is quite irrelevent.
That is what has happened.
What has gone before.
Today 'time' is no longer past and present.
Time is it, and the wheel.
And, for good or for worse, it is forever -

The future.