Future

This poem existed
in the future,
but now you are reading it
in the present,
and that first line
is already in the past

A frontier of letters
waiting to be shaped
and put in order
to become someone’s now

And then a memory

A ticker tape of time
that keeps slipping from
when, to now, to then

We held the future
in our minds
until it was no more

And then we watched it
slip away like a sailboat
over the horizon

Gone to find the territory
of memory.

© Tanya Southey