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Friday, November 12, 2010

Zero gravitas, or when I solve the fundamentals of time travel

If I could send
one message
back through time,
I wouldn’t write to beg
words off a writer
I admire –
be it Dante or Blake,
Yeats or Cummings –
and I wouldn’t warn away
the gazes of a to-be
lost love
or push the glad
hands of not-yet
abandoned friends.

I would write
to my yesterday self,
who lazily left
dishes for today’s
me to do,
and I’d rightly tell him:
“Please, reconsider
the sink-
me urge to shirk
was.

“These are citrus-
scented suds,
and if you let them,
they’ll tickle
a memory of 3
too-old oranges
forgotten to bother
the bottom of a wicker bowl,
which in turn
will return you to rethink
the how of when
a younger you
grew 5
times in those 10
years before the death,
and then
you stopped caring for the 20
since.”

It’s news of the wee,
menial
and non-consequential
tasks that gives
all of these me’s pleasure
now.

5 comments:

McDishy said...

Francis,thanks again for sharing your art. What a great read. Keep writing.

Eileen T O'Neill ..... said...

Francis,
I love this poem!!!
I confess to having a very healthy/unhealthy interest in time travel....

To only change my mind, to dabble with the opposite direction etc etc.
Surely even I might attempt a poetry prompt such as this!!!
Glad you are still word plenty full!
Eileen :)

Francis Scudellari said...

@McD I've tried to stop, but it appears I can't :). Thanks.

@Eileen There is definitely fertile ground in that topic. Despite my best attempts to focus on other things, sometimes poems force themselves on me, and I have to write their words or lose them.

Anonymous said...

you have super beautiful imagination here.
if...
wow.
divine poem.
keep it up.

Francis Scudellari said...

Thanks. Sometimes beautiful, sometimes strange :). I'll definitely keep at it.