Day Trip to the Future, Ten Minutes Forward

Its six thirty seven
Its dark outside
the birds cycle through their call
we are close enough to the city
their song echoes the blackberry curve

Its six thirty eight
Windows updates
Bounced my box last night
My cat just jumped up on my desk
Feeding time

Its six forty one
I've travelled into the future
The children slowly wake
Today they won't go to school
Mapquest the doctor's place
Load the directions into my head

Its six forty five
My journey continues
I let the kids sleep in awhile
I think of you

I woke at three last night
The bed's too big without you
I turned on the lights
I turned my body to the right
To purposefully lie across the bed
As if to say
Woman
What have you done
Returning home
From the war
I didn't dream of a bed made from a living tree
I dreamt of what would happen to me
thinking carefully
Two years
Ten years
I was a passenger
I asked the conductor
What train is this
Where am I going

And he said
You're going to die
Don't you know its different for girls
You're broken
You're only young by mistake
You're halfway through a seven year cycle
You're going to lose everything you make
First your hands and arms and legs
Then your heart and lungs and head
Then your spirit will fade away
And you'll be food for worms, my boy
Food for worms

And the dark soft earth covered me
Lowered into the ground by men
Slowly I hatched a plan
As I fell asleep again
Maybe there was a way
I could go forward in time
Six forty nine

And the stillness
And the dark
come at last

Six fifty two
I write this to you
It will be erased soon

Six minutes left to take care of the medical paperwork
Ten minutes to feed the children
You always came first
Maybe you're the problem
Maybe you're a solution

Science seeks explanation
of things never seen before
in ways everyone understands

Poets explain things
everyone has seen before
in ways noone understands

And still I wonder
Whats left of a man

Probably
Not much more
Six fifty four
In the words of Ian Shoales
I gotta go