If I’d been looking back
to see where I had been
I probably would have stumbled on
opportunities unseen.
So I’ll leave the past in the past.
It’s gone, and it’s done its part.
Whatever I need to remember
is already stored in my heart.
Eyes wide to the future, I step out
and leave the baggage behind.
I’m travelling lighter now-a-days
if only in my mind.
#60
Non linear time lines tangle
merging into one time,
the now time.
All things happening at all times
in a shoe box of photos and keepsakes ‘neath my bed.
Photos of children as they grow,
of weddings doomed and weddings blessed,
of loved ones gone and of times before
loved ones came to be.
Smooth skin, bright eyes, dark hair,
sapling and tree and firewood
phoenix and flicker
into and out of being.
There is no old, no young,
no tomorrows, no yesterdays.
All live in the shoebox amid the newspaper
clippings and children’s first teeth,
letters to Santa and letters from lovers,
curls of hair tied with red ribbon,
and a broken watch.
If everything
is happening
all at the same time
then different tenses
don’t make sense
and there is no design
that we can plan
to plot our span
with any accuracy
tomorrow, today,
it’s all the same
chronological fantasy.
But where’s the logic, chrono or not?
I hate to throw a damper,
but I think we’ve all been thrown into
a galactic laundry hamper.
Furthermore this time space thing
seems to be pure bosh.
But I’m pretty sure eventually
it’ll all come out in the wash.
#329
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.
Everything’s happening right now.
Never a matter of if or when
No time to gain or to lose.
Visions are memories,
Déjà vu is yesterday’s news.
#314
I had a dream last night
of walking down a familiar street yet
the houses were old and gray
and I was young.
The air was cool and unbreathed and
seethed with ideas unthought,
dreams only starting to prickle the edge
of consciousness.
I had a dream last night
of a familiar place in an unfamiliar time.
Night fell like a silent blanket and no light shone
but the ghosts of candles
lighting the path for late wayfarers,
and the liquid glow of starlight and moonlight
playing on edges and dabbling ponds.
I had a dream last night,
then I awoke to the song of the wild goose calling
goodbye.
#264
I hereby revoke
time’s untimely yoke
and assert that time travel
is mine to invoke.
If clocks can be set
back or forward, I bet
I could set a calendar
without much regret.
And the time that I choose
would be mine to reuse
or rethink, or relive,
to gain or to lose.
A million years will go by
past the day that I die
and I’ll meet myself travelling
and ask for the time.
#201
If I could remember the future
the way I remember the past
perhaps I could make alterations
to plans and find true peace at last.
But then, upon further reflection
I recall that my memory is flawed,
I often recall, over fondly,
things that never happened at all,
or places and names are all fuzzy
and my actions may not have been quite
as heroic as I now recall them,
in edited, rosy hindsight.
So if I remembered the future
the way I remember the past
I’d probably make alterations
that would set me right down on my ass.
We can’t change the past, that’s a given
but we can change the future, I guess.
just not in a way that we can control.
without making a terrible mess.
#197
Right, so, every now and then I get a glimpse
just a chance glance at the past and it looks
like a trail a snail might leave,
sorta slimy, you know, but really it’s just
a trail of used tissues. The ones you blow
your nose on but then there’s nowhere to put them
so you tuck them into the wristband of your
sweater and forget ‘em and eventually let ‘em drop behind
till you find them like an unappetising line of
bread crumbs to the past.
Then I look back and down and all around
at the fingers tugging my sleeve and bugging me to
leave the past and do the present ‘cause it’s now and
how can we move ahead, get fed, if I don’t focus on the
folks that need me now and here and here and now
and now the day is over and they’re all just more
dropped tissues.
The future is beckoning and I’m out of my reckoning because
it keeps on shifting and drifting and staying just out of reach
as I trip over tissues and issues and self inflicted misuse of
God given talents and I balance my weight on the edge
of this day and say it doesn’t matter if it’s
past, present, or future,
it all makes me tense.
#36
My CD "New Traditions" is available for listening or digital download
My CD "Breathe" is available to listen to or for digital download
Linda Studley is a writer, songwriter, independent recording artist, and sometime graphic artist living in Northern BC, Canada
Linda Studley 