Idle rambles – echoes from the past, voices of the present, whispers from the future

By Noel Ihebuzor

I hear echoes of my future playing in the present on scripts lip read by this me hewn from a crusty past that now reaches forward to embrace me smiling on a surprised morning

The me I see you see now is not me but visions of me mingled with snippets of your retina, aching stories heard on a tympanum tremulous, this me singing, in another voice, another’s voice, this me that you hear hears you echoing dimly lofty notes of me, singing of roads I walk on dew drunk dreams, nudging sluggish limbs to where I began, to where I want to go to unearth the buried umbilical cord that ties me, my present, my past and my future. And the vision is misty and my voice mushy.

I hear and feel the turning of time. I feel I sense myself also turning in that fine running sand of time, finding my present and rediscovering my past, reliving it and becoming, reaching out to embrace a future that runs from me, slightly ahead even as the distances narrow.

I see the familiar smiles of the new and reach out to feel and wrest it whilst still trying to anchor to the present I know and think I own. I am aware of  the changed yet unchanging times, the turning times, time returning and reappearing, the changing of the seasons, the trees that weep and mourn, the trees that announce new beginnings as green leaves sprout, unfurl and unfold and wave to  a smiling sun, lovely greening days, swaying in the cycling circle of time.

And I think I hear the voice that reaches from eternity to say – nothing really changes, save the way humanity looks at unchanging times, and me saying – “even knowing that change in a unchanging change is good enough for me”.