To the Future, Sending Signals in the Dark

"...whenever the winebowl emptied, it 
refilled of its own accord." 
        ~ Ovid, Metamorphoses Book VIII, 616-724



In Café Stella, over at the next table, 
the medical students have their textbooks 

open and are comparing notes on neuroanatomy 
in a clinical context. For memory: the amygdala,

the hippocampus, the neocortex. I want to ask 
them: if clairvoyance were a thing, what part 

of the brain is responsible, and how can that
ability be cultivated? Regardless of how ready

we might be, all that we learn from the sum
of hard years and rare moments of feathered 

joy line the bowl into which we dip our faces 
each day— Which one now, which one tomorrow?

In the future, when it's time, will one of us
turn into a linden and the other into an oak, 

braiding our limbs even as leaves fall to mark 
the seasons? Across lifetimes, eternity sends 

signals. Sometimes, we think we can decipher them;
then they turn into the haloed green of fireflies.