They were invisible entities whose efforts with me were labored and hard-won. They told me I had no choice but to choose.
“You must choose and then return.”
Form was not in question; sex, a secondary selection. I would be human again and named, like all the times before, yet new, like each time before. I would be Alice or Allen, short or tall, or any combination of variations.
“May I have talent this time?”
“By Grace you may. It is written.”
“May I escape pain?”
“To some degree.”
“Have I not shown improvement?”
“But not sufficient.”
When they left, something stood like Enoch’s lost scripts on the crown of conical time in a cave at Qumran, awaiting time’s funneled-down transport to reality.
The tall mirrors of periodicity stood mountain-high about the intervale, converging all image into itself and into reflections of itself. There was no movement save a dive of decision and an eclipse, a flurry of feathers and a sleeping.
The whirlwind whispered;
The child threw the stone into the cave;
Shards shattered, spilling sagery on the earth;
The spiral was begun;
The memory forgotten;
The choice, submitted, sent
The Soul in secrecy to
The bone gate, a passenger to be named;
Free flight fixed into form,
Was held up ingloriously in
Hospital hands,
Up by blue ankles,
Was whacked, wrapped warm, and cried.
The beginning of time is neither
Behind us, nor before us,
Nor is it beyond us in any way.
Being but belief, there be no time.
Being below eternity,
Time is born of mortal choice.
