Tag: future

Lingering Smoke

Smoke from distant fires
Mars the clarity of a blue bird day
Find the moment’s beauty
Even the haze cannot mar

While I clear my mind
Of moments past and future
Smoldering there

One breath
Then another

Blow the haze away

My fear is always
More about the road
Already travelled
Than what is to come

I carry the past
As tragedies
And failures

Then project them ahead
Like road signs

Diverting me from a truer path

I remind myself
When checking the rearview

Acknowledge the tragedies and failures
Along the road once travelled
But leave them in the past

Then bring to mind
The triumphs and successes
Project these on every road ahead
As billboards of encouragement

Where once the road
Went ever on and on
The straight and narrow
A path long fixed

Now curves ahead
Promise us adventure
Through lands ahead unknown
The future far beyond

And I
No more or less the merry
For what is known and what is not
All are part the journey

No matter the words you say
No matter the things you do
All paths lead to you

A golden destination
Partially concealed
In unfathomable
Possibility

These leaves may seem
Like a reminder of past glory

These leaves may seem
Like a reminder of future possibility

But the leaves
Are just leaves

All the rest is just stories
I tell myself to make sense

Not of leaves
But of my own existence

Hither I leave
This valley of death
And I will fear no future

For I bear not the past
Carry only hope, and my staff

Tenacity

I carry my past
In a backpack
So I am never far
From the moments
Which defined me

Events
Connections
Love, loss
Attainment, failure
Lessons, places, people
Glories and gaffes and grace

Everything that ever happened
To get me here
Where I’m standing
In this moment now
On the path
To who I’ll be

With one last lingering look
I turn
And leave
The past behind

I drive through history
Illuminating the present
Drawing a map
Into the future

I remind myself
Do not linger in the past
I need to know where I am
And look where I am going