We, here at the Edge of Yesterday, are not just visiting the past, we are inventing the future, a feat that may require some reassurances, as we move from the known to an unknown world.
Remember the Morrow
- Inventing the future is fearsome.
- No roadmaps,
- Nor sure sign posts.
- Life exacts the courage to get up
- Every day and trace our one
- Uncertain step at a time
- When what you’d really like is to
- Know how it will all turn out in advance.
- But that’s not what the future holds.
- It holds only uncertainty that the
- Ground will even hold in
- Territory so unfamiliar.
- It’s like the ancient cartographers
- Must have felt when they wrote,
- “Hic sunt dracones”—Here be dragons
- Who can singe us with one flame-throwing breath.
- But maybe they’re friendly dragons
- Awaiting your arrival and using their fire–breath
- To roast corn and potatoes, to serve up
- A clam bake (Two if by sea) or a beef stew
- (One if by land). Or pizza, even.
- Edamus! — Let’s eat!
- But no, the dragons might take that wrong
- Come to think of it. Don’t eat us!
- The future is a tricky landscape
- Not for the faint of heart, although,
- Come to think of it, maybe the heart knows
- What the mind doesn’t (and isn’t there a Blaise Pascal
- Quote to that effect?) Hear that, heart!
- Risking no leap today, tomorrow may never come.
- Attune (atone? at one?), with awareness
- Be fearless! Remember the morrow.
Remember the Morrow
by Robin Stevens Payes (c) 2017
[1] The “ostrich egg globe” was apparently made in 1504. It shows a scattering of islands in North America’s position; 12 years after Columbus’s first voyage, the area was largely unknown. This view shows Asia and a ship in the sea with the legend “Hic sunt dracones” Credit: The Washington Map Society/The Washington Map Society