Year: The time taken by the Earth to revolve around the sun, or 365.24 days. [Emphasis mine]
Leap Year: A calendar year of 366 days, 29 February being the additional day. It offsets the difference between the calendar and the solar year.
- Philip’s Atlas
What about the 0.04 days
that slip away every four years?
Where do they go?
Are they daytime or nighttime,
a perpetual dusk or dawn?
Are they hiding in a corner of the universe
waiting for the end of time
to reappear—
surprise!
The party’s not over
yet.
Hmm, let’s see:
0.04 days every leap year
during the 2,000 odd years
we’ve been counting
this way,
or 57 minutes and 36 seconds
every four years,
would make about 20 days
20 days of time,
unspent time
during which no one laughed or hiccuped,
made a wish or issued regret,
sneaked outside with a lover,
raised a glass of champagne,
or paused on a dance floor
to chant out the year,
to count out time.
On the coming leap year, maybe
if I sit very still, on New Year’s Eve
at 57 minutes and 36 seconds before midnight,
that is, at 11:02:24 p.m.
I’ll slip away
with the next 0.04.
Johannesburg
June (Winter Solstice), 2002