Is time dependent on that which we invent to measure it? Or is it merely how it is perceived? Is it what we build in, around, through and in spite of it? How different, really, are the past, present and future if we embrace none of them?
The future came and went far
too quickly to be remembered.
It left me with my foot stuck
in a borrowed door, jimmying
a lock on a broken chain
draped loosely over the sloping shoulders of
today. It ran past me backwards and
jokes still waiting for punchlines, mouthing words not yet spoken, songs still unsung,
How odd to see your own head from
behind. How disconcerting it is to
build wasted efforts, futile undertakings when
outcomes are clearer than their inspirations.
Mistakes made shame the steps
yet untaken. How lonely to stop
singing notes yet uncomposed in
company unmet with hands still
red from clapping out rhythms never danced to.
_______________
I want to think back with delight
on the future, lived, loved and
remembered in the mirror of these
moments spent writing of others spent,
yet to come – the moments reconstructing yesterdays.
But, alas, such is not our lot;
a die caught and counted before the cast.
Final pages on stories told
make little sense pasted in
the wrong book. Words, once read,
cannot be unread, only forgotten.
Horizons, once past, only open up more of the same,
yet to come. Horizons look the same
from every direction, once we awaken to
the great vast blue that envelopes us.
________________
Only when we’re drowning is any shore
a welcome shore.
Rob's Lit-Bits 
Wow, that was beautiful. The older I get the faster the future seems to come and go and I loved the part about “how odd it is to see your own head from behind.” I feel that way all the time.
Joylynn, our time here is so much based on our perspective really, isn’t it? The watch, the clock mean nothing. What matters is how awake we are to the wonders of the right now. Then we need never feel the need to deconstruct our now in pursuit of some phantom future.
I keep running backwards
trying to catch up to myself
Kairos and Chronos
keep stepping on my toes
where oh where have i
misplaced my pocketwatch
wobbly I’m fumbling
somewhere on the road.
🙂
Yeah, like that!