TIME TRAVEL

From Another Time. Vintage Photo Montage, 12x18.                            © by Ruth Zachary

Time Traveler I -2012

            Time does not become sacred to us until we

             have lived it, until it has passed over us and

             taken with it a part of ourselves. John Burroughs.

I am drawn back into history, almost as a voyeur,

trying to peer through time into earlier centuries.

I try to see those ancestors clearly, as I read

their private notes, letters, papers, and poems;

I remember I am the one they have trusted

with these delicate details of their personal lives.

I can never be fully present with them no matter how

they seem to materialize in a view backward through time. 

I am not able to see all the details they saw.

I see myself as a wraith, a transparent spirit, a shade,

intruding into their concrete space of yesterday.

What I see is colored through the glass of my era.

As I view them, I attempt to express realities

as they saw them. It is not mine to judge them,

but to allow them to speak of their experience

on their own terms, as completely as is possible.

I know as well, that I may see more of their world,

than they actually saw themselves, while they lived.

I try to be true to the persons that they were,

while I add the perspective of this present, that might,

if anything, magnify the clarity of their lives.

And if I add my observations, I wish I could also

announce my visit there, dated in this new millennium,

but I am limited by this dimension to record it only here.

This Poem is published in Theories of Relativity  Copyrighted by Ruth Zachary © 2012, Zachary, published by Xlibris, and available through Amazon. Stories, letters and poems about family. 350 pages, with 20 photo montage illustrations. 

The  montage shown above is not included in this book. To see other Vintage Montages click on the link  R.Z Montage