A Love Letter from Mountain Time

a point in a foreign time
ephemeral
unknown, yet known.

i’m falling in love with people I won’t get to spend my life with.
how do I come to terms with the idea that now is now
and then will be then?

will they stay frozen in time, to defrost sometime in my future?
or will they remain simply as lights within my memory,
resurrected when stumbling upon a photograph of this time.

will my kids ask me about them?
or will I forget their names?
blank faces
reminding me of this time in my life

how do I accept that I am here to observe?
looking through a window at their lives, intercepting momentarily

what will I leave them with?
fond memories?
newfound adventure?
a new perspective?

will I be a ghost to them?
like mist in the morning,
here one moment,
gone the next,
appreciated, and then forgotten

in the light of a new day
of a different future

Behind the Poem

I wrote this a few weeks after landing in the United States. I’d started my new job, met some awesome new people and the emotions I touch on in this poem come and go constantly.

The question of whether I’ll be staying in contact with these people, or whether they’ll simply fade into a memory.

“will my kids ask me about them?
or will I forget their names?
blank faces
reminding me of this time in my life“

This stanza was inspired by a moment I had with my Mum, when we were going through some of her old photos and she picked up a photo of her old high school friends. She could name one or two, but she couldn’t recall the rest, despite having so many memories with them. Will my friends in this time turn into the same? Maybe writing this poem is a desperate attempt to jog future-me’s mind.

Being here with the people I am with – citizens of a foreign country feel as though I’m standing on the other side of a very thin pane of glass. Unless I make a permanent decision to move here – it’s likely I’ll only get this time with them. Because of this, there is only so much time I can spend with them, only so much of myself I can pour out and only so much I can observe.

And that’s the beauty of it. Ephemeral.