January Three

January Three

Today is the day that
Herman Melville set sail (1841)
The Brooklyn Bridge was begun (1870)
J.R.R. Tolkein was born (1892),
So contrary to popular belief
Herman did not depart under the bridge
reading Lord of the Rings on his way
to the whaling grounds,
History has a way of twisting time lines,
Often we think we did A then B then C
when in fact B proceeded A which proceeded C
or perhaps D, I don't recall exactly,

Some physicists, and many poets
think time is not a linear river of clocks and calendars
but instead of jumble of strings
like a plate of spaghetti,
Each string may be linear
but one can jump from string to string
from one time to the next and back again
then to another, and back and forth
twisting the dial of the clock
the pages of the calendar
the phases of the moon and seasons of the sun,

Beam me up, Scottie
Back to the Future
If today were not an endless highway,
What would we do
where would we be
Does anyone really know what time it is?

Back when, each town had its own time
based on local noon
when the sun was at its zenith
it was noon, simple enough, but a problem
for trains and inter-city commerce,

So we synchronize our clocks and phones
computers and calendars to the pico-nano-micro-milli-second
and wonder where the time goes,
as we each sail under our own Brooklyn Bridge
towards Middle Earth,