I Have a Time Machine

But unfortunately it can only travel into the future

at a rate of one second per second,

 

which seems slow to the physicists and to the grant

committees and even to me.

 

But I manage to get there, time after time, to the next

moment and to the next.

 

Thing is, I can't turn it off. I keep zipping ahead—

well not zipping—And if I try

 

to get out of this time machine, open the latch,

I'll fall into space, unconscious,

 

then desiccated! And I'm pretty sure I'm afraid of that.

So I stay inside.

 

There's a window, though. It shows the past.

It's like a television or fish tank.

 

But it's never live; it's always over. The fish swim

in backward circles.

 

Sometimes it's like a rearview mirror, another chance

to see what I'm leaving behind,

 

and sometimes like blackout, all that time

wasted sleeping.

 

Myself age eight, whole head burnt with embarrassment

at having lost a library book.

 

Myself lurking in a candled corner expecting

to be found charming.

 

Me holding a rose though I want to put it down

so I can smoke.

 

Me exploding at my mother who explodes at me

because the explosion

 

of some dark star all the way back struck hard

at mother's mother's mother.

 

I turn away from the window, anticipating a blow.

I thought I'd find myself

 

an old woman by now, traveling so light in time.

But I haven't gotten far at all.

 

Strange not to be able to pick up the pace as I'd like;

the past is so horribly fast. 

—Brenda Shaughnessy