Time's Ineptitude

Was it a yesterday
the spirit highway opened,
or tomorrow? I forget.
Its realm is uncongested, scarce beset
by death or by regret;
the traveler is instantly at home.

A silent revelry prevails
as seconds greet oncoming centuries
we thought were left behind
and incorruptible.
A man may gather time without intent
and spend it on some soft historic whore
or on a spotless virgin
of a new ten thousand years--
gone and still returning, sum
of a new ten thousand fold...
and days are old
are still to come.

Do we take time
and sift it through our fingers?
Or are we the ones manipulated
by this fashioned curse we saw
when planets turned
to lose and gain the sun?
And will we fashion that old dream
of Edison and Wells,
or is it done?
For Armstrong won
two seconds of his youth
two hundred thousand miles away.

I think the dinosaurs will play
in Einstein's time
a hundred thousand years ago
...someday
~