Time Travel

June 8 2012

Time travel

is impossible,

the physicist huffed.

What if you met yourself

coming and going,

not even knowing

who he was?

What if you altered the past,

pulled the present

right out from under?

But the truth is

we are all traveling in time.

Except in only one direction

at identical speed

into the future. 

Or should I say a future,

since an infinite number

all hypothetical

dangle out in front.

Tempting us

like the carrot before the cart,

fixed

in the middle distance.

And our speed is hardly the same,

feeling faster with age

slower

the more we pay attention.

With all the gizmos of modern life

it should feel futuristic.

Maybe no silver lamme suits

or flying cars,

but marvels, in mysterious black boxes

we should find

a constant amazement.

Yet nothing really changes.

Life is hard, bodies ache

we still complain about the weather.

It’s as if we are stuck in the permanent present  — 

our belief in progress

more like superstition;

and with technology

living as we always did

just quicker.

We are time travelers

who also go back.

Except what happened

is never the same.

Because memory preserves the past

rather badly,

and nostalgia

vastly changes it.

So, am I the same man

who began this poem?

Or am I the future me,

who is now typing

this ending?

Or am I trapped

in the permanent present,

inescapably

typing forever?

And will this poem be sent

off into the future,

where some hypothetical me

may read it again?

Perhaps

at last

remember?