A stranger gave us directions
at the mouth of the subway.
My friend and I heard him
but we had trouble with his accent
and disagreed about what he said.
The guitar man busking quarters heard
but claimed he had been there already.
Everyone else was on cellphones
or lost in headphone land.
"Get down, go down, find the Gatekeeper
who will ask you for the correct time.
There's only one right answer,
here or anywhere. Don't screw this up.
Then go west of certainty, north of comfort.
Take passage over the Jell-O sea.
Study, talk politely to demons.
and you may know the
So we went down the tunnel and told the ticket man
who bared his teeth, "The only time is now."
He growled, but let us into ferry-land
where we took the Western Line
and sailed off the maps to the slow motion sea
that moves like tree sap
We came at last to the island where Chronos
lies bound in sleep. It took us only thirty years
of constant study and conversation with spirits
- but noone is counting here - to win entry
to the Cave of the Dreaming God.
In the slipstream of Time that is no time
possible histories flicker off and on;
ifs and might-have beens and might-bes,
memories of the future, roads not taken
in one world but followed somewhere else.
We learned not to look too long
at what we prefer not to see -
goosestepping Nazis in
plump Protestant ayatollahs ruling
Earth infested by bog-men and hungry ghosts
or ruled by insectoid dynasties from a hungry star.
To look here is to pluck from the quantum soup
a strand that becomes a species thought
and may become an event track in the serial world.
"Jus' like pickin a guitar" said the busker
when we came up from the underground.
So we'll keep the Cave of the Dreaming God
well-hidden, like a fleck of pyrite in a drop of amber
on the fob of a dead poet’s pocket watch.
- Robert Moss
