Sestina: A type of poem that contains six stanzas, with each stanza having six lines. All stanzas have the same six words at the end in six different sequences that follow a fixed pattern. The words chosen here are "travel", "find", "pass", "present", "matter", "second." Note that the form of the words can be changed for grammatical purposes (e.g. "pass," "passing").
We Are Time Travelers; A Sestina on How to Time Travel
I have unlocked the secrets of time travel
It was surprisingly not hard to find.
Stumbling upon a train of thought passing
through into the past of my present
The key is mind over matter.
Close your eyes, it only takes a second.
Now, we move on to the second
step. Imagine the globe of Earth traveling
anticlockwise through a sea of scattered black stars, of space and abstract matter
This next discovery is a peculiar find:
You have to let go of the present
before you can reverse time and move on to the past
It isn’t hard, all I really needed was a passing
thought and the hour, the minute, the second
hand of my body clock will carry me into your presence
When we were still reality – before the past swept you up in its travel
to the now. Back then I was your greatest finding
And to me, that was all that really mattered.
Why is it that we only realize what matters
when it has left us? We try to rewind past
regrets with illusion solutions, replaying in our minds the should’ves; finding
only more new undeserved ways to get second
chances at repeating same mistakes. A fallacy; time travel
will fix nothing if not to make us more reckless with the present.
Dry the tears from the globes of your eyes. Unwrap eyelashes like bows of presents.
Look. See. This smattering
of painful knowledge; it helps to take comfort in being innate travelers.
Let our obsession with doing everything quicker, faster, be kept in the past;
like automation, like evolution. Live slowly, wondrously. The seconds
we live, we waste, will mean nothing if we are not found.
We are time travelers. But a word of warning: do it too often and you will find
yourself stuck forever left behind, speaking of history in the present
tense. Some unthinking attempt at keeping another second.
Learn instead to be free of the matter,
to dwell not on black and white photographs from a hazy past
when we have so many roads left untraveled.
I hope to find myself in all of my life’s travels,
the gift of living presently and embracing the ghost of memories past
so I can wander on, on, onto the second matter.
