"Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead, 

Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea sweep

And profit and loss."

from Death by Water

by T.S. Eliot

Common Terns in the far slough. Where have they journeyed and

what have they seen, that they declaim the tale in such shrill voices?

"In others, books make visible changes in readers over the course of their lifetimes, accentuate the temporal contingency of those changes, or stand for a perpetually postponed future."


from THE BOOK IS A TIME MACHINE

by David Henkin

http://www.publicbooks.org/author/david-henkin/

Some texts I have read recently or am reading that can be said to support this

in the most literal sense;

"The Chronic Argonauts" by H.G. Wells

Sherlock Holmes and the Vampires of Eternity by Brian Stableford

Journey to the Land of the Fourth Dimension by Gaston de Pawlowski

Lilith by George MacDonald

Flight

"When the time of sorrow is come?

They will take the goat's path, and the fox's home,

Fleeing from the foreign faces and the foreign swords."

from A Song for Simeon

by T.S. Eliot

Storm coming?

"And beyond such a river, this ritual night

think of the summer weather questioning the corn

contoured for the rain, while the lightning crawls,

and a face like a news event approaches the world."

from Interlude

by William Stafford

"The stories you remember feel like mirrors,

And rereading them like leafing through your life at a certain age,

As though the years were pages."

from A Private Singularity

by John Koethe

full poem available here

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/57386/a-private-singularity

Pelicans in the far slough?? Or dreams?

"These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep."

                           the Tempest

"What's past is prologue"

                                   The Tempest

"You find it in yourself: the ways that led inexorably from

Home to here are simply stories now, leading nowhere anymore;

The wilderness they led through is the space behind a door

Through which a sentence flows, following a map in the heart.

Along the way the self that you were born with turns into

The self that you created, but they come together at the end,"

from A Private Singularity

by John Koethe

full poem available here

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/57386/a-private-singularity