1 post / 0 new
253rd Weekly Poetry Contest winner: TIME TRAVEL FOR BEGINNERS

by Ciarán Parkes

You have to bring back so much stuff with you
in order to survive, not just clothes
appropriate to the period and gadgets
to dazzle the natives with but oxygen

if you plan on breathing, a habitable planet
to walk about on as this present one
will have moved on elsewhere, even
a few hours back in time could spin you

half a continent away or, more precisely,
to some other part of space completely
as the stars, the galaxies keep speeding,
leaving you behind. Much easier

to stay where you are, let yourself imagine
you've just arrived here, a being
with limitless powers, miraculously hurled
from the future, about to change the world.

See all the entrants to 253rd Weekly Poetry Contest