I am a firm believer in time warps.
In folding zones
and involuntary ticks
and talk about relativity…
It’s as clear as the gnomon on your face
that time shifts and passes
dependant upon the momentum of age.
Is the hourglass half full or half empty?
Time must be relative.
That’s the only way my grandbaby
could turn eighteen so soon.
#226
Why does it seem
like a faraway dream
of only a minute ago?
Time on the wing
is a relative thing;
a concept you can and can’t know.
Like a cat in box
sometimes here, sometimes not,
even now, there’s a clock ticking down.
Though time tends to blur,
we are what we were,
but were we then what we are now?
#139
It’s that day when the sun comes out
and melts the skiff of snow into muddy
puddles and the sky is that soft shade
of blue and you can’t remember
whether it’s late fall or
early spring.
That’s when you catch a fleeting glimpse
of why calendars are such
stupid things.
#117
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.
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
Time and space,
Space in time.
We take our place,
yours and mine
Tangled lines
within a web
human vines,
specious threads
overhead
stars align
fortunes read
give the sign.
All design
that ever was
repeats in time
again because
nature’s laws
are resigned
to ever draw
the spiral line.
Our space in time,
beside ourselves,
a nursery rhyme
that time retells.
#301
The broken watch’s hands were frozen on its face
Like not to know the time was some kind of disgrace.
I pulled the back off with a knife, and gingerly removed
the hands and face and gears and bits that refused to move.
The gears and bits and face I threw away, they had no claim
upon my sympathy – but the hands – I pitied them their shame.
I put the hands back loose and free to rattle in the case
with a sign that said ‘Time is an Illusion’ for a face.
Now I have two watches, and when I need to make decisions,
one tells me what the time is, the other tells me what it isn’t.
#298
I wrote down the year today
as nineteen instead of twenty.
as though some errant, swirling time warp
tapped me on the shoulder.
New memories came like visions
from temporal cognoscenti,
and transcended the divisions
between now and then and older.
Which made me wonder what would happen
if one day the time warp hit
straight on, full force, and pulled me
deep into the eerie vortex.
Would it be a hurricane’s eye
where once and future engrams flit
like flying cows and spinning barns
whizzing past my quaking cortex?
Would patterns form and fray and fade,
emerge, then merge again to form
the multiverse of maybes
that spawned my personal, perfect storm?
The brainstorm of the century.
The wormhole to what’s never been.
The one way ticket, first class seat,
to the nearest loony bin.
“Two thousand twelve, two thousand twelve,
not nineteen anything” I say.
I grip the pen as if an anchor
to my actuality.
“I have too much to do to ride
time’s crazy centrifuge today.
the future past is soon enough
to face my own reality.”
#295
After all these years I still delight in your laughter,
still live in your eyes, as you live in mine.
After all these years, going forward to forever
is the same as going backwards, or just standing side by side.
After all these years, how did life get sweeter
when we were so certain it was perfect at the start?
After all these years our souls have grown together
two trees that twine their branches, impossible to part.
After all these years, it seems like a hundred,
and it seems like a second, all at the same time.
After all these years, one more is just a number,
cause we count our lives in other ways, after all these years.
#269
Happy Birthday to my darling partner.
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 