Disclaimer
Mar 31 2010


You and I have a past
we share.
Not a perfect understanding.
Not time-travellers
re-visiting hard established facts.
Because we don’t return to the past
as spectators
disembodied, hovering overhead.
Who could just as well
be watching a vintage film-fest,
home movies
in endless loops.

History is not fixed.
There is the version written by the victors,
and then how it looked
to the extras, and walk-on parts.
And how it improves with each re-telling
bit-by-bit —
how selective memory is,
the well-embellished anecdote.

Here, in the present, we co-exist
moving on parallel paths,
intersecting
slipping back,
imperceptibly drifting apart.

But always, walking into the future,
as if the future really exists.
This is the conceit of the definite article,
acting like a road-sign
on a pre-determined path,
where we’re all in silver lame jump-suits
drive rocket cars.
When, in fact, “future” has no singular
— they are multiple, unlimited.
Or nothing, perhaps.
Because every second
there are forks in the road
that, looking back, were actually crucial turning-points
— the car chase, and sudden impact,
the simple choice
that tempts disaster.

So we invent the future
re-invent the past,
as time inexorably carries us.
Disappointed
at how much faster it goes
the closer we get to the end.
Which is when the final credits roll,
as eulogy, epiphany
and epitaph.

Thanks to each other,
lifelong companions
the one true love.
Thanks to everyone
we inadvertently left out,
who helped make all this possible.
And thanks
to the fictional characters,
who in no way resemble
anyone living or dead.




I suspect it may be easy to get a little lost in this poem. It’s actually very simple. It’s about perceptions of time. In
particular, about the fallacy of the definite article: because there is no “the” future and no “the” past. The past is actually highly mutable: like history, it depends of who gets to write it. And “the” future presumes this sort of serene confidence that we pretty much know where we’re going, and that things will be pretty much the same once we get there. Or at least follow a predictable trajectory.

I suppose it’s the twin metaphors running through it – the movies, the road -- that may be a little distracting. Which is too bad, because I’m really quite pleased at the way I was able to sustain them; not to mention the rather cheeky ending.

Anyway, as is the case in any worthwhile poem, it may take a couple of readings. Which I think is worth doing: it’s actually not a bad poem at all!