What's Time to a Hog?

Today a man asked me
for the time, I told him
what my watch said but I had
a funny feeling about asking
for time. Could a beggar
on a street corner ask passersby
for a quarter or half an hour?
Might they say, We haven’t time
to give you time, or some real
smartass would say, I wouldn’t
give you the time of day.
A banker might say, Time is money,
and if the beggar said, I’ll trade—
what would the banker say?
When I was a boy in school
one of my teachers scolded me,
You mustn’t waste time looking out
the window. I wasted paper, broke
my pencil, scuffed my books,
but no one gave me time.
How could I waste it?
I could understand ‘‘tide’’ in
‘‘there is a tide in the affairs
of men,’’ but how could I
‘‘take time by the forelock’’?
I know we had days and nights,
seasons and years but I measure
life by what I do. Though I’ll bet
my tombstone will be marked with time.