Into
the Present
What is time? Does it lie behind you like
a road, cemented and pulling,
taut, unchanging, as easy to trace with
one single determined finger
as a line on a map?
Or does it flow through you like a river,
sweet or cold, muddy or roiling?
If you fought up the stream could you find
your past living in deep eddies,
or stuck under logs?
Maybe time is like a scar, the mark that
is left after a thing has been done,
its story only existing as long as the
scarbearer is there to tell it.
Or maybe it’s more like being at the top
of a waterfall,
and we row and try not to look as everything
falls away just beyond our backs.
I think that time is a broom.
It is a precious, ancient, cosmic tool
that we can hold in our hands,
holding hands with grandmothers.
It makes us useful, sweeping away cobwebs,
keeping the world clean. It makes the old
new,
clears room for the next, magic for our
daughters.
And we can use our brooms and our own
strength
to forever sweep ourselves
into the present.
