Back And Forth In Time Poem by Krista TaltsNassehi

Back and Forth in Time
(A poem in three parts)

Part I - The Attic


With time-worn eyes, vague eyes
sad, I slip into a reverie.

An attic hidden from my mind
well guarded and forgotten full
of feelings, half-remembered things.
This is my secret place
diffuse in roiling dimensions
and static discardings of time.

No up or down here
no seconds rushing into minutes
hours or years. Not yesterday,
tomorrow or today.

Inconstant time.
Seductive time,
unmeasured and wild.

Vaporous and roaring,
back-and-forth
above and below
time encroaching
apparitions
and revelations,
now dredged up,
the revelations least expected.

Full of sly things is my attic
warped caverns of caprice
twisted passages resound
an intrusive and leeward fugue.

An engagement ring’s prism
glitters its eye and settles on
a ring of burning gold, now dusting
in slow moving shadows,
revealing a red book of
adolescence, wrinkled and torn.

In a corner beside a heap
of rancid things reposes
mother’s sewing basket,
fingers hem scallops on
my baptismal dress, now
transformed by speckling
shadows, stained with tar,
a pretty rag, just out of reach.


Fades forward a child in
white scalloped dress. She
runs along a grey macadam
road, the length and width
of her horizon, crossed
with bubblers of burning tar.

She runs.
Alone.
And late for God.

The shadows
clench, shift,
waft summer air
and blistered smells

Now from the back room, the
forbidden attic room, a white
butterfly takes wing and
flutters, touches my cheek
with gold dust, a glittering,
yellow arc in spreading
sunlight.