Poem: "The Wandering"
Dec. 25th, 2022 11:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithThis popped into my head today, pretty much whole. It's the opening of a new series, and since this is after the Holiday Poetry Sale and outside the regular prompt calls, there isn't much opportunity to get it out there. So here it is, and happy holidays.
This poem fills the "sun" square in my 12-1-22 card for the Wonders of Nature Bingo fest.
"The Wandering"
As people get older,
some of them feel
an increasing sense
that they are not just
in the wrong place,
but in the wrong time.
This feeling gets
stronger and stronger.
It's a nagging itch,
a certainty, a necessity:
they are needed somewhere,
and it isn't here anymore.
What starts as an urge
becomes a compulsion:
they have to follow it.
So they begin to wander
the streets in search of
the elusive door that
will let them slip from
here to there, now to then.
The lucky few who find it
step over the threshold into
another place, another time --
into a world without them,
that desperately needs them.
They bring with them
all the knowledge of
a lifetime, the skills and
experiences to face down
challenges in their new home.
Time rolls back their flesh
so they take up the cause
that their younger selves
were meant to shoulder
and watch a new sun rise.
Those around them believe
they were only lost for a little bit,
or had a narrow escape from tragedy.
The Wanderers know better, though.
They may not know exactly what
happened to their counterpart,
but they know something did,
or they wouldn't be here.
They know they have taken
the place of someone who
could no longer be there,
whose life in this world was
the same, yet different.
But that's okay.
They also know that
they're meant to be here,
that they have at last found
what they were looking for.
This is the Wandering.
* * *
Notes:
Time travel appears often in speculative fiction, but this version isn't technological. It's a little twist of quantum uncertainty, flipping a switch from here to there, now to then, made possible by the world's driving need and the tendency of very old people to loosen their attachment to the here-and-now. Here it isn't something people set out to do on purpose, but it is still something they choose to do by following their wanderlust.
I have already completed the first poem about a Wanderer:
"Starwind Again"
An old hippie Wanders his way back to Goa in 1969.
124 lines, Buy It Now = $62
This poem fills the "sun" square in my 12-1-22 card for the Wonders of Nature Bingo fest.
"The Wandering"
As people get older,
some of them feel
an increasing sense
that they are not just
in the wrong place,
but in the wrong time.
This feeling gets
stronger and stronger.
It's a nagging itch,
a certainty, a necessity:
they are needed somewhere,
and it isn't here anymore.
What starts as an urge
becomes a compulsion:
they have to follow it.
So they begin to wander
the streets in search of
the elusive door that
will let them slip from
here to there, now to then.
The lucky few who find it
step over the threshold into
another place, another time --
into a world without them,
that desperately needs them.
They bring with them
all the knowledge of
a lifetime, the skills and
experiences to face down
challenges in their new home.
Time rolls back their flesh
so they take up the cause
that their younger selves
were meant to shoulder
and watch a new sun rise.
Those around them believe
they were only lost for a little bit,
or had a narrow escape from tragedy.
The Wanderers know better, though.
They may not know exactly what
happened to their counterpart,
but they know something did,
or they wouldn't be here.
They know they have taken
the place of someone who
could no longer be there,
whose life in this world was
the same, yet different.
But that's okay.
They also know that
they're meant to be here,
that they have at last found
what they were looking for.
This is the Wandering.
* * *
Notes:
Time travel appears often in speculative fiction, but this version isn't technological. It's a little twist of quantum uncertainty, flipping a switch from here to there, now to then, made possible by the world's driving need and the tendency of very old people to loosen their attachment to the here-and-now. Here it isn't something people set out to do on purpose, but it is still something they choose to do by following their wanderlust.
I have already completed the first poem about a Wanderer:
"Starwind Again"
An old hippie Wanders his way back to Goa in 1969.
124 lines, Buy It Now = $62
Well ...
Date: 2022-12-26 12:43 pm (UTC)But the doorway can be found indoors too.
Re: Well ...
Date: 2022-12-26 12:48 pm (UTC)So, older = about 50-ish (my age IOW) and let me guess.. that door can pop up in the back of a wardrobe for example..?
Hm.. what about injuries? You said it rolls back time so they're younger, does that restore missing limbs? And although you said it calls the old, are there exceptions? Can young people become unstuck from time as well, but less frequently perhaps? I.e Narnia was an example, not fiction.