The First Time Traveller

[Stephen Whiteside]

The First Time Traveller

The means had been found to travel through time, but none of the fellas was game.
The boffins suggested that once someone did, nothing would then be the same.
The space time continuum, once it was breached, would be irretrievably torn.
What if you came to your own time again, to find you had never been born?

Would you vanish at once in a brief puff of smoke? Would you spin down a mighty black hole?
Would you land in a parallel universe, yes, and what would become of your soul?
Would your mind become blank? Would you act like a babe, with all of your memories lost?
Sure, we could travel the reaches of time, but no one was sure of the cost.

A child stepped forth. A poor orphan girl. Her skin, it was waxen and sallow.
Her hair, it was lank. Her long limbs were thin. Her breathing was rapid and shallow.
"I'll go," she whispered. "It troubles me not whether I live or I die."
And all who gazed on her were saddened and shamed by the desperate look in her eye.

No one felt keen that the poor thing should go, yet no one demanded she stay.
All were so curious. Would she return? No one stood firm in her way.
She stepped to the plate. A button was pressed. She was gone in the blink of an eye.
In a flash in her place stood a plump, healthy girl, and no one could understand why.

But, of course, you have guessed it. Her travel through time had altered her own history.
Her parents now lived. She now was a part of a prosperous, large family.
The sad, sallow orphan existed no more. Instead stood this picture of health.
Joy had supplanted the previous grief, while poverty'd lost out to wealth.

All of us hold some control of our lives. All have the power to choose,
But the greatest of risks are most often taken by those who have nothing to lose,
Yet here is a fable to quicken our pulses, to set all our minds in a whirl,
For a bevy of big, beefy blokes were shown up...by a sallow-faced, sad orphan girl.

Stephen Whiteside 20.03.2014

[alongtimegone]

I really enjoyed the story line in your poem Stephen and the poetry itself of course. I've been an avid reader of science fiction over the years and the paradoxes of time travel have featured a favourite with SF writers and their readers. Thank you ... Wazza.

[Stephen Whiteside]

Thanks, Wazza. Yes, I enjoy writing SF stuff in rhyming verse. It's popular with kids, too, of course. Most of it I struggle to grasp, like most people. Can't get my head around this latest stuff about the waves and the Big Bang...

[Catherine Lee]

Really enjoyed this Stephen - an original idea with a good message

[Stephen Whiteside]

Thanks, Catherine. It was a fun one to write.