Among the worst concerns we face
in travels back to any past
is every change affects the future.
Anything one says or does
extends potential consequence.

Just how and where, you never know
until you're back - perhaps today -
and everything appears as you
anticipate, until you see
the evening headlines on TV:

are there new faces, stranger places?
Or might you see reality
looks nothing like it did before?
And, should you chance "repair" it more,
each risk could only make it worse.

That's when this marvel turns to curse.
You'd always feel you can reverse
the things you thought you might have done,
but sometimes it's that you were found:
one glimpse can matter and astound!

It's more than action, past a word,
beyond you being seen or heard:
our very thinking writes to time.
Remembrance renders history
and possibly futurity.

Or be forgotten - either way
the simplest notion shapes the day.
That why I only skip forth now,
invest myself in what comes next,
not muss what was and live perplexed.