Not Reversible Poem by Sheena Blackhall

Life is not reversible
We are framed to follow the Future
Fate lays out her dark instruments
Where the wind is calling you on
To your lonely pilgrimage

Does your cultural skin still fit?
Drink deeply of words
Spilling out from the waves of language
The past is a litter of dead letters
Blowing along ghost highways
Where the starling sleeps on the wing
Under the hard rain

You are allowed to look back
Like two faced Janus, turning on a hinge
You are allowed to look back
On areas well loved of outstanding beauty
You are allowed to reflect on uncomfortable times
But you're powerless to wipe out their footprints

Twist your eyes like an owl
Scan your periphery, as you wobble
On the lip of tomorrow
Use your instincts to probe
Shadows, bogs, what's under blind frozen water
Holding the milky cataract of the moon
Beneath the brittle stars

Thousands of thoughts like crows
Have darkened your mind down the years
Driving you scared like a startled hare
Where terrors proliferate
Where infancy's teddy, wall eyed
Stripped bare of fun, stretches out to claim you
With stiff, unyielding arms