Love Beyond Time

by Dan McCrory

Image credit: James Bold on Unsplash

I wish, my darling, we had met long ago,

Unencumbered by our looming fears

of inevitable pain, sickness, and death.

Robbed by the inexorable march to the end.

Perhaps by attempting to ignore our fate

We turned left and not right and never met

And the decades piled on

We didn’t know what we didn’t know.

We didn’t know that breeze was you

Sweeping by me unheard, unseen

You didn’t know that my heart was aching

In anticipation of what might have been.

I would have taken you by hand

And run through fields of barley

Challenging the approaching storm

Demanding our moments of joy.

We were fearless then

When we, sure of our immortality,

Reveling in power, our bodies defied gravity

And the seasons of our constant rebirth

Like the sun rising despite the clouds

We shone like diamonds and ignored the shadows.

I felt us take a breath in unison to welcome the dawn

And yearned for countless moments like this.

***

Dan McCrory

McCrory’s first book, Capitalism Killed the Middle Class, is part memoir, part history lesson, part cautionary tale. It was a finalist in the UK’s Page Turner Awards in 2020. His first novel, You Will Forever Be My Always, has raised awareness about Parkinson’s Disease. The book was a winner in the 2022 Los Angeles Book Festival and has achieved a reputation as a very funny approach to a very serious subject. The YouTube book trailer has been seen by over 81,000 viewers. Dan’s latest novel is Worst Case Scenario: Election Night, in which Adolf Wallace rigs the election and declares martial law. Native Americans decide to take their country back. He is currently wrapping up Leonard Comes Home, a book that looks at Native American Leonard Peltier’s 1977 conviction in the deaths of two FBI agents. 

Dan McCrory’s feature Bubblegum Summers was a quarterfinalist in 2022 in the NYC International Screenplay Awards and placed as a SemiFinalist in Creative Screenwriting magazine’s 2025 competition. Another screenplay, an animated feature called Koo Koo Soup! was a quarterfinalist in the 2023 NYC International Screenplay Awards. His pilot, Wise, based on his novel, You Will Forever Be My Always, was awarded Honorable Mention status in the Palm Springs International Diversity Screenplay Awards.

McCrory was published in the 2020 anthology of California’s Best Emerging Poets. He lives in Southern California.