Parallel
I was invited to submit a blog for Cyphermunk House, and I thought "why not a poem?"
POETRY
Philip Charter
3/27/20261 min read


Two lines stretch
Running to infinity
Set to different speeds.
One runs in minutes
The other in blocks
These lines will never meet.
From a distance, fine thread
Zoom in, and whole galaxies appear
Stars and planets, all moving at the speed of time.
Between, lies an ocean of dark,
Impossible to cross
And yet, I swim with others
Floating free.
Looking back, past years fade
Ahead, the future blurs
But for those like me
Who navigate the space between
Who reach the frontier of true time, … we see.
We trace the past in perfect record
The future forms in never-ending zeros and ones.
And in our world, campfires burn
Surrounded by huddles of
Time-traveling psychonauts,
Sharing our escape routes from
The march towards death.
We talk of next century
We watch the stars and dream.
Across the divide,
The mainline races forward
Gaining pace but losing mass
Traveller by traveller.
Piece by piece.
A change occurs in every one
Who swims the universe
Feels the pull of their tether Ignores the force that draws them back
And cuts loose.
We leave the noise of nations
For the quiet hum of work.
We trade consumption for construction
Publish ideas; verify truth.
We find abundance In the vacuum of space.
Yet for us, the early few,
Craftsman, explorers, visionaries
We are held between
These parallel lines.
Our loved ones watch us take the strain
As gravity pulls us in a million different directions.
We bridge the distance
And hold these lines together.
With all our strength, we close the gap Inch by inch, block by block,
Then others join and take the leap
Leave the world they knew behind
So together,
We build eternity.




