Time Travel

Saint Jean-Baptiste Cathedral, Lyon

surrounded by smaller houses and buildings

like boats around an ocean liner

ready to set to sea.

For 500 years, it looks over the Saône

as the the city floats past,

built, taken down, rearranged.

Jean-Baptiste pushes forward in time.

If someone built a time machine,

I imagine it would look like this,

a vessel immovable as

the waves of the world slip past.

Above me are the windows of saints,

so I know where to steer and who to see.

Oh, that it could carry me backwards

in time to undo my sins.

But, I know that it can only carry me

forward to a place I do not know.

To the forgiving God for which I hope.