Time’s Gifting

Abstract

This poem is a reflection on the contradictions inherent to futures work. Pasts, presents and futures fold in on each other and this is reflected in the deliberately tribal image offered by Kristoffersson. In both image and poem lies biography and memory both personal and also epochal. Time is sticky and we must deal with that as best we can.

Time is sticky

 catching at my heart

  weaving our memories into dreams

  and nightmares.

Suffusing wonder with habit

 and surprising us by pulling a rabbit

  out of the hat… disturbing the peace,

  rocking the boat.

And so it flows, that temporal current

 and I swim, with you and all there is

  from Cosmic Bang! To the final finale:

  event horizon, promising terminus whist

 tribal drums beat the heartbeat

back into my lost humanity.

Yes, as I stand on this Earth that yearns for my attention,

 cries out for some love.

As I stand looking at green growth and rocks

 in hard places.

Measuring the scars of living and counting

 wounds so deep that only Time can assuage.

I see the Futures divergent scattered amongst

 ruins alive to memory and foresight,

 playful and intentional too.

And in it all

 love… a calling of Time to timeful inquiry!

Presence in emptiness and an exuberance of colour

 and light and sound, as of angels in the Pub

  singing Beatles tunes and raging against

  what is passing, slipping through our fingers, one

  tear at a time,

   clepsydra keeping time.

And when I look at my own yearning

 for home and the beyond that constantly calls

What can I say?

Perhaps like Dante, seeing his beloved

 I am transhumanized, ¹ becoming something other!

A futurist both of time and also of what could be?

A self of dreams and maybes?

A body committed to dance and delight and oh,

 feeling the pain of seeing this world dishevelled.

Knowing that always we can be so much more!

Knowing that in the struggle there is grief, failure and

 possibly Triumph too.

Loving in time, living its sticky contradictions

 giving birth to something totally beyond my imagining.

That is the gift and curse of Being in Time!

(Image 1: Past, Present, Future by Cecilia Kristoffersson).

Image 1.

Image by Cecilia Kristoffersson to accompany poem/text.