Time Travel Airlines
Welcome aboard, please take a seat
on Flight “Wish I Had Known You When.”
You’re going back in time to meet
your spouse you didn’t know back then.
A question first, before the flight:
where and when will your mate be?
(A real event—try as we might,
we can’t rewrite all history.)
Now choose your age: the basic rate
sends you as you are presently.
Or change your age—you two can date
for just a minor upgrade fee.
Cocktails are being served that ease
the memory of what awaits—
no diapers, weight gain, fights, disease
(those put a pall on most first dates).
There are no long-term side effects:
no matter what, you two still wed.
You might get lucky, might have sex.
Your spouse might hate your guts instead—
he or she won’t have a clue
of who’s inside that youthful skin.
That knowledge will come back with you—
you’ll know what is might not have been.
It takes one kind of faith to go,
another kind of faith to stay,
so buckle up, enjoy the show—
or take the exit, right this way.
Midge Goldberg‘s poetry been published in Measure, First Things, American Arts Quarterly, and other journals. Her poems have been included in the anthologies Poetry Speaks Who I Am and Rhyming Poems, among others. Her first book, Flume Ride, was published by David Robert Books in 2006.