The Fountain Poem by I.J. Benjamin

Our past, like the way a seed, a particular sort of seed sort of curves out at the tip, so it doesn’t fall out of a beak from a bird that carries it, a specific kind of bird, that lives in a certain place. A certain country, where a certain bird flies over certain patch of soil. Like a town in East Europe. It’s just there, never to be extinguished, only retraced. Like cement that sets, it cannot be unset, without it cracking, without the house falling apart.

We are nothing but the sum of all our parts, the present and the past, and only now matters, only now counts. It is impossible to start anew, that’s the tragedy of time. Still there’ll be those who’ll travel south, or go someplace where it’s cold, go to the Alps, and go farthermost North and they’ll try to escape, they’ll run to Space but their seeds and their plants won’t let them. They’ll say, hey, come back. You are mine, and I am yours, and that’s just the way it goes.