Ana Calder - The Shape of Time, 1971

 

Names stitched inside my coat, I walk with them through weather

Some are feathers, some are stone, some stay warm forever

I walk on and I look behind, the road bends in my mind

Twenty-six years, a wooden door, still the years grow more.

This is the shape of time, a river without a line

A life becoming wider, a heart still learning fire

I hold what I can’t keep, I wake what hides too deep

And all I know keeps changing in the shape of time.

I climbed one hill, then another, the sky rose up again

It called me from a higher place like an old and quiet friend

I opened every locked room with borrowed light inside

And every answer grew another silent door inside the night.

I am no purer than the road that brought me here

Through dust and rain, I have carried mud and mercy

Some words are seeds, you don’t understand them

Till the years grow roots, and they become trees.

When I die, if heaven opens for me, I won’t ask to stay

I see that kingdom in your eyes, I feel it in your hands each day

If I return with morning, soft and golden where you wake

May I be the quiet kindness you bring into someone’s ache.

This is the shape of time, a prayer without a shrine

A cloud that breaks to water, a child becoming older

I hold what I can’t keep, I love what has to leave

And all I know keeps changing in the shape of time.

Let me be born as time, let me be born as a breeze

Let me be born as love, let me be born as love

Let me be rain upon the ground, let me be light without a sound

Let me be love (let me be love) Let me be love...

   Notes I found on Web:

      A9 legend says Ana Calder once met her future self in a dream. Ana asked her, "What happens to me?" Future Ana just smiled softly and said: "You become wider." Ana woke up screaming.

      She misunderstood completely and entered what historians now call her "overthinking era." She drank more water, exercised too aggressively, and tried to become emotionally organized.

      Years later, she realized "wider" did not mean anything physical, it meant her life, her heart, and everything time had taught her to hold.

      To celebrate this very delayed emotional breakthrough, Ana ordered eight pizzas in honour of every version of herself who had ever taken the universe too literally. She ate all eight pizzas. She simply sat in front of them and whispered, "This is the shape of time."

      A9 remembers Ana Calder as: the girl who mistook prophecy for a wellness warning, turned overthinking into folk poetry, and somehow made emotional growth sound like it came with extra cheese.