In the Fast Forward Jungle

© 2000 Ian Hunter
All rights reserved.

Creep slowly . Breath held.
Eyes searching, straining, darting.
Seized by the blur of the big cat.
Raking claw, fastening teeth.
Bringing down the spindly legged young.
Feasting, tearing, not devouring.
That comes now as night chases day chases
moon chases sun chases ribbons of cloud unfurling overhead

Feel yourself age.
Read the counter on your wrist.
In old time, slow time, real time.
The dial moving towards the danger zone
Past the reversal window,
where these extra years cannot be
slipped off your bones.
Watch the fluttering sky and you will miss the
eaters of dead things descend.
Flyers, creepers, crawlers.
All take turns to have their fill
and play their part in this dissolution drama.
Insects eat up this dead piece of sinewy meat.
Wiping it clean to leave only the
glistening bone behind.

Move like a blur yourself.
One with the jungle to the high plateau.
Where the stuffed birds wait.
Not really stuffed, thatŐs only a label,
a slang term for a project long ago
and the remnants of
another failed time experiment.
Seemingly immovable.
Yet they do move if only you had
the time, the years, centuries, millennia
it would take to detect the blink of a startled eye.
The movement of a feathered head.

Try and stop as you approach their sanctuary.
The blurring stasis field that terrifies so many intruders.
Animal brains unable to comprehend
the slowing of their bodies.
The death of limbs that pass through this rippling border.
But you have been trained.
Countless simulations, hours of theory and practice
and the intelligence to know whatŐs happening.
Going to happen.
But still you wait and wonder
and contemplate the shock.

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