When I was little, time stretched out
but now I find the past, present
and future are condensed and tight.
From here, my former selves converge
just like a Doctor Who special.
I wonder how it ends?
                                                Perhaps
it’s like a concertina flow:
relax, compress, relax once more?
What if, however, it’s a black hole:
relax, compress, compress, compress?
Is there a memory time horizon
past which our recollections are
so dense they can’t escape?…
When I was young the wars seemed so
far back, but now they seem so close;
my parents seemed so old, but now
I find they were younger than I am today.
A year is but a month, a month
a week, a week a day, time slides,
and like a fairground hall of mirrors
the path’s confused and found distorted.
Within the glass I see the man
that I’ll become, imposed upon
the timefree boy I used to be.

As Doctor Who once famously said that time isn’t linear, but actually is, ‘like a big ball of wibbly wobbly… time-y wimey… stuff‘. Maybe it’s something to do with having passed the half-century, but I’m certainly finding this to be increasingly true.
(18.09.23)

© Ben Quant 2023
Photo by Mick Haupt on Unsplash