That time flies is a cliche; to say it has wings is not much better. The classical river of forgetfulness, Lethe, is a ready-made, tired allusion. But to make the wing real, like a bird's in a birdbath, and bring the wing together with Lethe, is poetry:
On love, on grief, on every human thing,
Time sprinkles Lethe's water with his wing.
This two-line poem by Walter Savage Landor reminds us of the particular pleasure in how a very few words can slow us down, a paradoxical joy in the slowing down of time achieved by swiftness. Two different forms create that feeling: the epigram, like Landor's poem, and the haiku. For many readers, the first examples that come to mind may be haiku, like these from Robert Hass's wonderful volume The Essential Haiku.
This one by Buson is about time's flight, but revealed in a specific moment:
The lights are going out
in the doll shops --
spring rain.
Here is one by Basho, attentive to emotional, as well as seasonal, weather:
Winter solitude --
in a world of one color
the sound of wind.
Here is an example of Issa's comic imagination:
The man pulling radishes
