Dear Dr Christie Obianuju Okoye! Our first meeting after my return from years of sojourn abroad was special. We bantered warmly, followed by a memorable chat about life — in Nigeria and, generally, on earth. To my astonishment on the occasion, you enquired about my 2002 poem, Time. Wondering aloud, I asked you how you knew of the poem and could still remember it. Smilingly, you said “From you, and I like it so much. It’s is a classic.” Then, suddenly, it flashed through my mind that you had in fact requested and received a copy of it before I left the country in 2003. Now that you have “moved on”, I have no doubt that you shall meet that unknowable, Time, we mortals have dubbed “tireless”, “paramount doctor”, “accountant par excellence”, “faultless auditor” and “endless”, and really know it. There, you would be applauded for the dazzling glow of the trail you blazed in your quiet working on earth. Many who had the privilege of knowing you in the “streaming file” of life would surely acknowledge your sweet uniqueness. I personally shall take more seriously the poem, Time, and always attach to it the very pleasant memory of you that I shall forever retain. TIME Tireless Time! How you stand in eerie stillness compelling the streaming file of all that was made and their works surveilling nature’s eternal current of alternating birthing and dying. Paramount doctor! The ultimate arranger matchless soother and leveller the only possible sibling of Divinity and silent witness of everything; the Creator Himself, perhaps. Accountant par excellence! How minutely you inspect and record the unending roller coaster of past, passing and approaching moments that is the enigmatic flow of being we know as life. Faultless auditor! How we tremble and submit in awful awareness of your ubiquity and endurance of your compassionate severity and incorruptible untouchability. Oh Time, the endless! The immortal and invisible beacon on which scrolls the book of life be merciful in your memory of us when tomorrow swishes hither and we may have moved on. Dozie Nwanna 28th November, 2002