Linda Studley

Two Apparently Unrelated Things and a Poem

Unrelated thing #1
I wear glasses. I hate wearing glasses but since I’m up to 3.00 magnification, reading etc… just doesn’t happen without them. I have about a dozen pair lying around at any given time in various stages of deterioration.  Some have scratches right in the middle of the left lens (the only one I use since my right eye has been on strike all my life); some have only one arm; some have both arms but have joints of jello, wobbling in a palsy of pre-collapse. Can I FIND any of these denizens of the home for challenged optical appliances? No, not usually.

Unrelated thing #2
I love Science Fiction by Issac Asimov. Short stories and novels. Mr. Asimov was my first science fiction read and he spoiled me for the rest. He was my introduction to grand themes like the multiverse.

Unrelated Things… that turn into poems.

‘Cross the Existential Track

There is, I think, a universe
That’s parallel to mine.
Where someone else who looks like me
Lives in a different time.

She looks and thinks a lot like me
Her eyes are hazel green
But she has witnessed many things
My eyes have never seen 

For one small thing is different
I’m not sure what or why
And that conspires to alter how
Her life goes flashing by.

Consider now the other ones
Who cross her path each day.
Each of them with their small thing
That’s altered in some way

It all adds up to make a world
That’s quite unlike my own
Where alternate realities
Have taken root and grown. 

I wonder what she thinks about
And does she think of me?
Does she wear glasses when she writes,
Or draws, or paints, or reads?
 
I’d like to send a message ‘cross
That existential track
“If you have seen my glasses could
You kindly send them back?”