poem
WRITTEN:
1988, 21 years
AUTHOR'S NOTES:
This was inspired/influenced by a SF story I'd read in the preceding week, which I think was called Continued Next Rock, but I don't remember who wrote it. It may be in one of my anthologies or it may have been from the library (I still had a membership in those days). Anyway, this poem is not my run-of-the-mill thing, mainly due to the cadence, but also to do with the topic. "Trinity U" refers to Trinity University in (I hope I've got this right!) Dublin, where I have never been. I just liked the sound of it.
It was something the archaeologist said to me
In my last term at Trinity U
That made me stop and think
About the course of my life
He'd been to the past, apparently
And given himself a good talking to
At a time when he was young and foolish
And on the verge of throwing his life away on marriage
To a waitress, affectionately known to 'regulars' as
Suzy the floozy (no less)
And so he got me thinking
Shocking me from student stupor
Wresting my mind from exams and honour rolls
Derailing my thoughts
From their preplanned routes
Dismantling destiny
Replacing conformity with irregularity
Intense eyes bearing down on me
From the head at the Lectern
He got me thinking
And I am ever grateful
He got me thinking of ifs and hows
He got me immersed in free-fall nostalgia
He gave me the clues
And I constructed the puzzle
And in the course of the paradox
Designed the solution
He got me thinking
My creative mind unleashed
I wandered and rambled
Through a forest of possibilities
Exploring the concept
But still having doubts
And finally finding courage to try it for myself
Time travel is not a matter of status, as distance travel is, as this
inevitably
involves time, no matter how little
to travel
commute
move
translate
from a point
co-ordinate
identifiable place
in time
events
memory
is an adjustment of reality
So I visited myself as I had been five years previously
And gave myself a good talking to
Because I was then so young and foolish
And on the verge of throwing my life away
On impractical tertiary education
And then I went somewhere else