SARAH PENWARDEN
Story bridge
The past present future
of that house, across the railway line
under the mountain
There are two kinds of time –
chronos, clock time:
rain falls, cat purrs,
fan palms scratch the glass,
the present moment of my breath.
And aion, elastic time,
time pulled across past and present,
stretching forward over eons;
we take time with us,
walking on a bridge of stories.
Our old house is still there
since we left it in ’86:
collapsing in on itself, the garden
swallowed up by regretful trees,
the whole town stuck in perennial autumn.
The house bends and dips,
appears and re-appears in my dreams –
living in my inscape, it travels
with me across the outer plains,
the porous divides of time;
I am forever leaving it.