Tick

Now and then
there is a moment marked
by a single tick
from an old schoolroom clock

that hangs on the basement wall;
relic taken from a modernizing classroom,
covered in plain dust and 
no small amount of soot put there

after a backed-up chimney
filled the room with smoke —
it happened seldom but
often enough to be 

an unremarkable event on its own.
A single tick for no reason.
No one cares if that clock works
so it’s possibly reminding us that it could

if we cared to clean it up a bit.
One tick in a room
where no one sees it moving.
“Here I am,”

it says in a room where no one
spends much time. Randomly.
Desperately,just in case
someone is listening.