Specious Present by Sally Evans

What is the specious present? asks the Hon Colin,
philosophy lecturer extraordinaire,
as we all sit and try to imagine the time not going by,
the present not changing into the past in a second
but the buzzing of bees which takes time, lap of waves on a shore,
a drowsy moment in a garden, in a lecture room:
the place you remember which takes its time being a moment.
It was long ago, some of the people are dead, others forgotten,
and I’d have to think hard to give you the year last century,
but I recall it was the hour that ran from 11 till 12.

Sally Evans lives in Scotland and has Welsh connections. She has had several books of poems published including Poetic Adventures in Scotland (2014) and the Bees (2008).