Phil Repko's "The Old Banjo" Concludes National Poetry Month 2025

Editor's Note: We thank the poets and lovers of language for sharing their poetry--their own or their favorites as we have celebrated National Poetry Month 2025.  

by Phil Repko*

The Old Banjo

A banjo clock hangs lonely now

In hallways near the laundry room

Where no one ever needs to know

The ruthlessness of quiet time.

The metronome was always wound

But not the ringing, singing chime.

They both have lost their mental edge

And now hang old, and more forlorn.

The enemy, the pendulum,

Has lost its spring, but keeps the pace.

I like to know it’s hanging there,

And someday I will seek repair.

The antique land I’ve traveled through

Is buried in a present past.

A balding head confesses time

Has won a brisk, but steady race.

I am no Colonel Freeleigh though.

No Time Machine from then to here.

The green, young lad I’ve always been

Has wrinkles all in proper place.

The trunkless legs of stone I’ve seen

Bear no brave, bold inscriptions now.

Sometimes the base is all that’s left.

So, memories must bridge the gaps.

The clock ran for a hundred years.

It harkens halfway back for me.

Aunt Maggie passed it down because

I’d loved to wind the giant key.

My Uncle Bud would hold me up

And keep life steady while I turned.

When their clocks stopped it hit me hard,

Yet I retained what I have learned.

The things of life are not the key.

My memories will outlast life.

It’s not the timepiece I embrace.

It’s all the ticks and tocks inside.

* Phil Repko is a career educator in the PA public school system who has been writing for fun and no profit since he was a teenager. Phil lives with his wife Julie in Gilbertsville and is the father of three outstanding children, two of whom are also poets and writers. He vacillates between poetry and prose, as the spirit beckons, and is currently working sporadically on a novella and a memoir. His recently published book of poetry Pieces of April can be found on Amazon and at Studio B Art Gallery. 

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