This poem was inspired by the remarkable, 1884 satirical novella, Flatland, by Edwin Abbott in which the narrator and title character, A. Square, living in Flatland, a world where all life is strictly two-dimensional, tries to convince the other inhabitants of Flatland that there is a third dimension. Each figure in Flatland is prioritized in Victorian-style society by the number of angles from which they are shaped. In other words, all women are straight lines (and the lowliest of all - but dangerous for their pointed ends). All men are some form of polygon in which the more angles they have, the higher position in society they carry. A. Square, an attorney, provides wonderfully descriptive images and characterizations of Flatland's populace, including the trials and tribulations he endures when he speaks to others of his visits to both the one-dimensional world of Lineland through to the three-dimensional world of Spaceland.

Just as A. Square tries to convince others in his two-dimensional world of Flatland that there is a third-dimension full of wonder and space, should we be so dismissive of the possibility of a fourth dimension in experience of travel through time?

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