The 3D Pop-up Children’s Book

The view from my verandah this morning
reminded me 
of those children’s pop-up
three dimensional
story books.
If you could enter the book
between two of the panels
could you not have access
to a two-dimensional sideroad?

If our lives are like a 3D pop-up
just imagine the strange,
the wonderful, the terrifying
adventures that we’ve missed,
slavishly following 
the arrow of time.

We become stupefied by what may happen next;
by who we are told we should be; 
by where we think we must be going.
Could fulfilment not suddenly arrive
through the serendipitous exploration 
of the laterals, 
the mysteries and wonders
between the brightly coloured pop-ups?

In the 3D children’s storybook of my life,
I have explored the laterals,
retrogressing at times,
but the story,
the real, unimagined, unplanned,
and unanticipated story,
is not the original.
It is a construct in which I participated,
which I changed as the story progressed,
sometimes planned,
sometimes accidental,
but always engaged
in developing the lateral.


The book is different now:
some of the panels are faded,
with rips here and there.
Some brightly scintillate 
with lives of their own.

The tale is, ultimately,
for all its change, wear and tear,
about happy endings.
   And it is my story.