Now The Future is infinite, the Past is infinite, but only Now takes time.I Remember Stopping on a Little Bridge in 1972It is so lateit is early, and there, once again,is that thrilling and disturbing birdof dawn, its four notes,one two THREE, four climbinga little way up into the futureand back down, and once againeverything that''s mine is in a rental truckor in the future.I should tell this boywho has pulled over by a little riverjust so he can breathe (this boywishing so hard that this would all be overthat he has somehow called me here)that it''s going to be OK. I should tell himto relax, that he''ll get there by sunset,sit among boxes with a six-pack,letting the TV run on and on.I won''t tell him about the breakdown, only a day,I won''t tell him about the worse thingsthat will break in a week, a month, a year,the ones he would think he could not get overand still be himself, the oneshe would hate me for getting over.I tell him, however it is we''re speaking,that it''s just fine here in the future,so that in a few minutes he can go on,as he did. I think him into the truck,which hesitates but startsthis time. Now on the waters fast enough to hear,the reflected moonlets go, sweeps downriver.

from Vectors 5.0: OtherwiseThe road not taken also would have gotten me home.~The camera makes snap judgments, but the mirror is persuadable.~Faith: what''s left when you lose faith in.~We think with our feelings, feel with our thoughts.~The secret to unhappiness is knowing exactly what you want.~Mountains are always moving. It''s less a matter of faith than of patience.

~It''s me, that image in the mirror, so I should know what it''s thinking. But when I look deep, deep in its eyes, there''s nothing, certainly nothing that says we belong together. I''m always the one who leaves.For the ChildrenThey were unutterably lovely, the aliens,when finally we knew them, when at last we understoodthey had lived and moved among us from the beginningin bodies the image of ours, though smoother, eyes wider,as if the world were a little darker for them, or more wondrous,and we loved them as wildly and deeply and helplesslyas our first loves, our dreams, our lost ones, all at once,though we knew they were wilder and deeper than we were, and freer,and loving them only deepened our loneliness.When they gathered on evening corners, faintly luminous,and their murmuring rose in urgency, calling on stars,we feared they would leave us for worlds far, far beyond us,though we dared not ask, in their language so eerily ours,Will you carry us with you? -- lest they look away, boredwith our dullness, our burdensome love, our ignorant dying.What could we, after all, with our dim minds, our narrowed sensoria,know of the lightning of their thoughts, the storm of their joys? --or their sorrows, for sorrow was theirs, they were lords of sorrow.Why in the world these creatures, immortal and perfect,should be so gloomy and aimless was beyond us,yet they grew so slowly into the unprecedented liveswe had thought they would seize instantly as their rightthat it seemed the long long future brooding over themwas so heavy they could hardly bear it forward one little step.And at last they dismissed the fantastic travels, faster than light,that had landed them only here, and their magic technologiesthat had taught them, it seemed, what anyone could have told them,and they ceased to gather on corners, dreaming of rescuers,and glanced, if at all, only sidelong at the stars.

Maybe some earthly pathogen had worn them,or the weakness of our yellow sun had left them so wanthat even their radiant children could not tell them from uswhen they sat with us, sipping at coffee, a little more patiently now,enduring our sadness, our sad adoration, even our sad reliefthat life was a little less possible than once we had hoped,since who else in the vast, small universe still knewthat they were as luminous and unutterably lovely,as our first loves, our dreams, our lost ones all at once,so impossible they were beautiful, so beautiful they were true?.