Look Back

When you look back at our
odd and primitive time
will you wonder, as we do,
if the ones before you saw,
or tried to see, what it would
be like far up ahead, like
perhaps a plowman in
Essex or Kent, or Nebraska,
maybe Iowa, envisioning
our time — time so distant,
foreign and strange, world
unknown, envisioned, imagined,
technologically advanced
yet same, ruled by chance,
by trial and error, by
unrelenting interplay of
heat, rain, and profound hope.

J. B. Hogan is a poet, fiction writer, and local historian. He has been published in a number of journals including the Blue Lake Review, Crack the Spine, Copperfield Review, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Well Read Magazine, and Aphelion. His twelve books include Bar Harbor, Mexican Skies, Living Behind Time, Losing Cotton, The Apostate and, most recently, Forgotten Fayetteville and Washington County (local history). He lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

Find more by J. B. Hogan in the Author Index.