Back to Terra Firma…
Like waking, sweating, from an intense dream
To find your bedroom still, calm, serene,
Unchanged the world just kept on turning,
Ignorant to my journey,
Like a stranger, passing on the street
Who sees nothing when our eyes meet
But another stranger, passing on the street.
And have I even changed myself?
A book is taken, read, enjoyed,
And simply placed back on the shelf.
But am I read or he who reads?
Probably the latter, with the seeds
Of nostalgia slowly growing
In a melancholy soil,
As at the end of every book,
Like a war whose spoils
Are new memories, perspectives,
And a briefly overwhelming sense of loss.
But as you toss aside the volume, used,
Soon, with a sense of pride renewed
Can you sing its virtues to those lucky enough
To have a similar adventure ahead on their path.
It’s tough when good things come to an end,
But dusk and dawn are nothing more
Than two sides of one fence.
Such is the cycle of life and all,
And once the dust has fallen,
And is settled, resting on new ground,
Then we can continue journeying around,
But now the world is coloured anew:
With memories,
And lessons,
And experiences,
And characters,
All new.
And things lost and things found,
And one night stands,
And two night stands,
And three night stands,
And then, and more fulfilling,
Are the new permanent residents in the heart (and in the mind)
Dwelling there for evermore
And the hope that what remains is joy at their coming not sorrow at their passing.
And yet still I’m left asking:
What have I learned?
What’s really changed?
I know what I miss,
But what have I gained?
But we never, I fear, see our own progress
As immediate or tangible, but it’s their nonetheless.
It takes time to see change
And it’s constant
And it’s constant
So constant in fact
That to call it a change just plays up to the act
That who we are is ever really fixed or attached
But when we change up our tact
And we take a step back
We see that it’s exactly
That constant change,that perpetual flux
That defines us and points out exactly where we’re sat.
A moving fixed point.
A walking contradiction
In a world that when pictured
Is immediately distorted
By the reductive processes by which we try to import it
In diction or thoughts
It just cannot be sorted.
But therein lies its beauty:
There’s no need to make sense,
No need to comprehend,
All that there is to be done
Is to live til the end.