THE REAL FUTURE

Nobody wants to look at the real future,
Not because it's too horrible, not even because it's
Too boring, but because it's too confusing.
Current issues will become trivial, then forgotten,
In light of new concerns that seem, in their time,
Overwhelmingly significant.  Good and bad, personal and cosmic,
Will mix together in intimate and ambiguous ways
Whose meaning will be incomprehensible, not to mention interesting,
Only in light of specific anomalous events.
Of course, no one really knows the real future,
But even if we could, no one would look because,
In light of its drama and its humdrum,
Its differentness and its sameness, we aren't really very important.
And yet, to each of us, our lives truly can
Gratify in the present.  How odd, that in the unlikely event
Of saying or doing anything that might be remembered
Beyond our own lifetimes, it will be remembered because
It speaks to that unknown future in terms that
Have meaning to its concerns, a mix, surely, of the
Eternal, important to us as to then, and the specific
That would seem pointless to us now could we even imagine.

— Uncle River

Fiction by Uncle River
has been excerpted online at
Talebones

All rights to this poem belong to its author.

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