Shadows Out of Time

A Dream of Years ANN K. SCHWADER

A dream of years…Or was it? I awoke

adrift in my own senses: sound & light

alike too strong, too alien & bright

for subtle understanding. When I spoke,

another’s tongue resculpted every thought

to suit language I half-recognized

as elder to this planet. Yet disguised

within those words, I found—& then forgot—

a thousand premonitions. Futures passed

like phantoms through my outstretched fingers. Strange

& small they seemed, both fate & digits changed

to fit the limits of this form.

At last,

one nightmare limned the source of my despair:

in distant waters fringed by primal fronds,

I glimpsed myself as I had been beyond

the prison of this present. When or where

my mind had voyaged, it returned to me

in horror at my own humanity.

After Lovecraft’s “The Shadow Out of Time”