It’s the first thing they tell you in Temporal Navigation 101:

Time is water,
But it knows no gentle ebb,
Only the rage and riot of rapids.
You can’t go back, the Temporists say;
The currents are too strong.

Early in the morning
I can hear my neighbor’s TV
Reverberating through the tin foil
Walls of her FEMA trailer

(taken from 2020s advertisements)

it’s written in the stars:
the ingeniously simple
magnetic mechanism
of the making process —

The earth tears at her concrete visage
until she can breathe through the cracks.

Listen to the viscous vows of retaliation
she presses through her stuffed throats:

zephyr sings a lullaby into my body
that she may light my eyes and dulcify my tongue

don't listen to her—
⁠the aphorism of my stomach roared in hurt
and reluctantly, i was submerged in its words:

Those who know tell us it will rain for days
as the west burns in the unrelieved heat of the sun –
all of this beyond our control thanks to the willingness
of a handful to profit by whatever means possible.

I want to show you the beach
that has been with me since I was in utero.
Now I carry it inside me in my turn:
the rocks, the barnacles with their
fronds and sharp edges,

I was thinking today of a
world without traffic lights
where pushing the button
on the dashboard for recirculated air

Roses without thorns, blooming and wet with dew.
A garden of sweetness
A song without bitterness
A bird pouring out its heart at dawn
Song pure and weightless in the trembling air.

Inside extant skulls of extinct giants
We’ve made our homes for many a summer
Solstice. Wildflower wreaths, crowns, garlands
Ornament the colorlessness of bone,
Our way of giving thanks to the earth
For not having annihilated our kind just yet.