The Shape of Things to Come

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When I was young, the future was above the past:
Time was like a triangle turned upside down.
I floated through the days
(Floated, since the rise was effortless),
And every choice I made
Led to a widening horizon
With a more expansive view
And more and more from which to choose,
Until, sometime in middle-age
(I couldn’t say exactly when), the whole
Thing got inverted,
Like a chalkboard in a wooden frame,
Swiveled on an axis I had
No idea was there, the future now below
The past, the floating now
A terrifying, headfirst fall,
And the horizon is still widening, yes,
But the choices are receding…
But then, perhaps the whole analogy is wrong.
The peel-off calendar beside my bed
Declares time isn’t up or down:
It’s in. And I have burrowed so completely
Into what it is I am,
I can barely see the sunlight showing who I might have been.